


Magnets

by zaynyboy



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, M/M, Sexual Content, Teasing, Time Skips, mentions of Zerrie - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-05
Updated: 2015-02-05
Packaged: 2018-03-10 05:05:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 45,792
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3277802
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zaynyboy/pseuds/zaynyboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>'But if after all it’s only a blind trust, a blank notion maybe, would you ever believe in destiny if it had its formula, a scientific explanation? Would you believe in it like you believe that opposite poles attract?'</p><p>Or how Harry & Zayn through the years learn to deal with destiny and gravity and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Magnets

**Author's Note:**

> The idea of this dates back to last summer, but I'm pretty sure it has actually been burning inside of me since forever. I made a tag called 'magnets' on my blog which grew enormously fast until I couldn't stop myself from digging deeper and deeper. So, yes, I had to go all the way down until I found myself typing words Harry and sixteen in the same sentence.  
> A couple of apologies of which the top spot takes my absolute lack of knowledge in use of commas in English since it's not my first language and I've never had the patience to study through it. So you'll find them thrown in places I considered them as necessary, but probably had no grammatical substantiation of their use. And secondly, be ready for a long ass introduction, meaning, there's not much of conversations or communication in the first part which may throw some of you off if wide situation and emotion descriptions are not your cup of tea. It warms up to lots of action though, promise.  
> 

~~~

 

“If two points are destined to touch, the universe will always find a way to make the connection - even when all hope seems to be lost. Certain ties cannot be broken. They define who we are - and who we can become. Across space, across time, among paths we cannot predict - nature always finds a way.”

— 

| 

from  _Touch_    
  
---|---  
  
 

| 

   
  
 

~~~

 

Harry is sixteen and for now, he doesn’t believe in destiny. Well, he doesn’t _always_ believe in destiny, like all the time. He owns his truthful romantic’s heart yet a rational enough head on his shoulders and in all honesty, it’s not something he truly understands either, all that soul mates and things written in stars stuff. Higher power, you may say. It’s not like he ignores it though. Who could even when there’s millions of books written about eternal, bearable love and movies with fairy tale endings, embellished to the sweetest sense? It’s all over us, inside and out, as much as anyone could try to deny it in their cynical anger against romance and stories about two paths colliding, being destined. And Harry knows that true love exists somewhere. He’s seen it, heard of it, but then again, he’s also seen how love dies, slowly and noticeably burns out until it’s gone completely.

Honestly, Harry has no clue what love can do to a person or is it as extraordinary as everyone says. Besides, how do you know if you enjoy the taste of chocolate unless you’ve actually felt it melting into your taste buds? You can only imagine. You can only imagine how love feels like until it ghosts through your heart.

It’s probably not his time either. For now, Harry’s notion of that kind of a bond exists in some other space - much higher, much further - , because, maybe he’s not supposed to know it yet; thick skin and white expectations of life. And Harry may be naïve in his ways, but he’s definitely not a fool. He could’ve fancied girls like Katy Campbell during his eight grade and the way she laughed with her tongue piercing slipping between her snow white teeth. And he could’ve been crazy about the way Molly Wilson whispered his name in her Yorkshire accent like it’s the last thing she’s allowed to say on this Earth, but it was nowhere near what love should feel like. It couldn’t be.

So, it’s not that Harry even knew what to believe in in the first place, nor that he thought about it that often. He enjoyed being a teenager, a quite popular kid in high school that daily deals with young girl as much as old lady attention in the bakery he worked part-time, but never, _never_ took it into his head. His parents had brought him up in all the right ways, planted a strong sense of gratitude and modesty in him and then he also had Gemma who, he knew damn well loved him to bits, but at the same time was always there to tease him without much tolerance or protection from his friends eyes and hold him grounded.

All that Harry might have been convinced about though, was that for him, they’re all still a bunch of inexplicable terms out there. Similarly as all of those listed in his physics notebook: sublimation, crystallization, magnetization... If you’re not too much into the whole science thing, it doesn’t really make sense for most of the time, does it? Because, commonly, people tend to assume that things written down and printed into science books are logical. Obvious. They believe in math formulas and grammar rules because those have been claimed to be rules for centuries.

But if after all it’s only a blind trust, a blank notion maybe, would you ever believe in destiny if it had its formula, a scientific explanation? Would you believe in it like you believe that opposite poles attract?

 

***

 

With as self-contained nature and inquisitive soul as Harry’s, he still felt like he came back to the confession of knowing nothing about the choices for his future more often than one could wish for. The secret prone to make everyone happy and to become a lawyer for his dad, a business man for his step dad and a rock star for himself isn’t much of a help.

His mom, though and bless her for that, always reminded him that all that really matters is what his heart says, not anyone else’s mouth does. She knew how much Harry loved singing so she never stood in his way, simply giving him the freedom that any teenage boy could only dream for and fully trusted him. And if there was one thing that Harry needed desperately in his life then it, indeed, was freedom and liberty to any dumb choice he made in his way. He learned, it hurt, he cried, but never complained. Never asked _“Why didn’t you stop me from that?”_ because, no. It’s not how it should go.

So he owned this pompous dream that took over his brain every time he had a rehearsal with his mates at the back of his cousin’s garage or simply whenever he could open his mouth and hum along any song he wanted to. A silent, but constant determination that it’s the real essence of his life. All that he’s supposed to do - to be on stage, make people happy. All that he’s _meant_ to be. And yeah, there are probably a couple billion of teenage boys who have the same dream and a guitar placed at the corners of their messy rooms. There are masses of young kids who’re determined to become stars, their face printed on every other magazine, but the thing is, that wasn’t what Harry needed. Not the fame or paparazzi or unknown people trying to become his friends. Fame wasn’t it, Harry on the contrary, was scared of that word and almost despised it. All that he wanted, what he fearfully, eagerly wished for, was simply to sing and see people enjoying that. People understanding.

So that’s Harry’s plan about six weeks before he has to turn in the final applications for his college courses. The plan is – well. There is no plan. His inner voice changes its tone more often than he changed his socks and not that he would’ve ever told that to anyone, but it was bloody terrifying, this entire grown up life.

So the one thing Harry has concluded from all the fear is that he’s wishing for a lifeline. A breaking point. He has no clue what kind of or where to look for it, but he needs someone throwing him the rope so he could climb up the sheer wall. Torn between the dreams and the reality and all the stuff he’s aiming for, it had created such mess in his head that it reaches the point where it sucks the energy out of him. He wants to do this and to do that, but not really sure where or how and ends up somewhat lost in the excitement that turns into fear of loss and failure far too fast. It exhausts Harry. And for a sixteen year old, it’s a bit of a too early age to feel tired from life.

 

***

 

Harry’s sat down at the kitchen table, chewing on what tastes like a week or so old corn stick and aimlessly leafing over the _Rolling Stones_ magazine, barely paying attention to any headlines, when Gemma speeds past him with a wrongly buttoned coat and a slipshod ponytail bouncing up and down as she goes. She rushes over to the fridge to grab a bottle of water and leaves an efficacious perfume cloud behind her just as she runs past Harry, seemingly not even noticing he’s sat there.

“Shit,” she swears under her breath when notices the wrong buttoning and throws the bottle on the table which is also when she makes a quick glance at Harry.

“Has someone died?” she asks while nibbling around the buttons.

“What?”

“Your face,” she points at it, “has someone died? Not Mrs. Saunders I hope.”

Gemma smiles wickedly and it probably sounds as the meanest thing to say except that Mrs. Saunders is ninety three; incredibly lonely lady that does daily visits to their closest neighbors, including Harry’s house just to talk about death. Her dead husband, her dead friends and how she doesn’t understand why it hasn’t took her yet. And it’s completely unfair to find it annoying at times, Harry knows it, but it’s undeniable how depressive those visits always are. How it seems that they pull out the colors of you.

“Just a headache,” Harry shrugs.

“Hmm,” Gemma frowns and what looks like, reads Harry’s thoughts through her furrowed eyebrows. Then, does the last button and shuffles under the coat to reach after something at the back pocket of her jeans.

“I forgot,” she throws a scrambled piece of paper right under Harry’s nose and grabs the bottle with her other hand. “This for you, rock star.”

Next with a quick goodbye curl-shuffling greeting she disappears and Harry can hear door clinging about five seconds later.

He stares down at it, lazily at first, but then reading through the lines of the golden numbers and letters from the red, mashed flyer, his attention grows frantically fast.

An audition poster with a date a few days ahead from today.

-          _“Singing in front of thousands of people is your dream? It could be YOUR year! X factor auditions return this June, don’t miss your chance!”_

X factor. It’s like a pendulum hitting his brain. He watches it every year, but it had totally blanked out of his mind. Well, it had never come as an option for him, not yet at least, but Harry completely freezes. His entire body stops functioning once his fingers have clenched between the corn stick and the piece of paper. Is he for real now?

His thoughts suddenly go rushing and in about half a minute he sees all of it in his head: Simon Cowell’s disgruntled face, people booing him off the stage, his friends all laughing their faces off and his parent’s disappointment. His heartbeats do a few sprints and he’s sure he has never been this nervous and excited in his entire life just from a couple of pictures created in his mind. Then, another thirty seconds later, he makes his decision based on a very strong _what the hell_.

Here’s the lifeline, right here on his kitchen table, next to the last week’s corn stick. And he’s gonna take it and climb that god damn wall even though, it seems more of a slippery, rapid mountain than anything he can hold on to.

\--

People are more than excited – friends, family, distant aunts and third-degree cousins – everyone loves the idea of Harry’s curls shining on the national television. But apart from the blind fuss of how girls would love him from the first time he smiles, two dimples flying out to their hearts like tiny Amors, no one takes this whole idea too seriously, Harry read it from their eyes. Meaning, everyone supports him, everyone gifts him with first-rate encouragements and for fucks sake they even made these ridiculous _‘Harry has the X factor’_ tees. But, if you look at it, if you _really_ think about it, Harry is only sixteen and everyone’s watched the show before. Everyone’s aware of the level of talent so he honestly doesn’t want to take this personally, except that. He sort of can’t do it otherwise and it scares him more than anything.

 

***

 

He got this, doesn’t he? He _got_ this.

Harry’s here for a reason, he knows that. And he got through the first audition, he’ll do it again and again and again until he will hear someone say _you’re through to the live shows_ and then it would all be in audience’s hands. Somehow, being dependable on thousands of strangers seemed far more consolatory than on a couple of professionals. The second audition is a step higher though, that’s for sure. The first one is more or less based on what anyone puts on the table as their first impression and, no arrogant vibes here, but Harry knows the power of his natural charm. And he has a decent voice, not the strongest maybe, but he puts this aspect at the furthest corner of his mind because it isn’t about that. Not only.

The whole package, they say. Passion. Sincerity. A star quality. Harry deeply and utterly believes with all his blood and bones that he has it what it takes. Ever since he first opened his mouth in that kindergarten play rehearsal and his music teacher’s eyes widened half as much as they usually did when she was mad surprised or hysterically nervous; then blossomed in a star-eyed smile.

So. He can do this.

 _Can he_?

“Darling?” Anne’s voice quashes the air as Harry catches himself humming _The Man In The Mirror_ in a high speed sort of version, making it sound like a soundtrack of 90’s cartoon.

“All good?”

Harry responds with a flashing full dimple grin that apparently still isn’t confident enough to postpone his mom’s famous eyebrow frown or her hand dipping deeply into his shoulder.

“You’re gonna be great,” she approves in calm tone and exchanges the frown to a warm, soothing smile.

“Yeah,” Harry sighs. “Just need some more practice, yeah? Back in ten minutes,” he says and slips out of his mom’s hold, leaving a small kiss upon her nose on his way out of the crowded room.

Well, that’s a white lie. Harry feels like if he’ll sing those few lines even once more, he’s going to vomit them lyrics – a word by word – until his throat would get all soar and hurt. So he isn’t quite sure where he’s rushing that firmly, but he has to get away from here: from confident, gorgeous girls in high heels and guys in their twenties with broad shoulders and huge, raspy voices. It’s all too much, all too headache causing.

He doesn’t think about the direction much and just flies straight through the several waiting rooms, people in his way sweating from the camera lighting obnoxiously heating their foreheads and sort of yelling over each other’s voices, practicing with headphones tucked into their ears. The sounds get more and more malformed and the fabric of his shirt keeps sticking at the back of his dim neck and once he hears someone hitting an extremely high note like half a meter of where he’s standing, he thinks he might as well pass out.

Harry gets through to what it could be like the third or fourth door and he feels himself almost running now, his knees barely keeping up with the tingling in his bones and there’s a brief moment where he sees a future flash of him collapsing on the stage in front of the judges right before the fresh air finally reaches his lungs. The last exit turns out to be the one that’s leading to the base court of the arena and he had never inhaled that deeply in his entire life and maybe that’s what also makes him cough sharply right after he’s tried to breathe out the huge amount of air stuck between his lungs and throat. But when he leans down to press his palms against his knees with a hope that it would help him to steady his beating heart at least to a bit of a human rhythm, he notices that it’s not what scratches his insides like that, it’s the cigarette fume creeping upon his senses. And just as he’s about to turn around, a silent apology comes from behind.

“Sorry.”

Harry spins around in a bit of a panicking manner, his head still twirling, but once he can clear his eye sight, he stumbles upon two hazel ones, staring at him apologetically.

“What?”

The guy seems to tighten his already stooping shoulders even more, his lashes dropping down low as he blows out a puff.

“About the cig’? You coughed, I thought…,” he stutters, pointing at the smoke and leans at the wall of the building, steadying his shaky legs. He seems to be in a similar state as Harry, less hectic maybe, or perhaps, it’s the nicotine helping him.

“No, it’s fine,” Harry says after some good, long five seconds during which he seems to be flying back into his own body. “I just needed to get out.”

The boy nods and turns away as if he’d be scared to face Harry or something and just as he’s turned his back at him, Harry can take a long scan of his bony body.

Thin, around Harry’s height, his age as well, probably. Short, dark hair and really wide shoulders, Harry could swear he’s seen him before. And it’s not like it should matter this much, because it’s a really great chance he’s seen him before inside of the arena nor that it would make any difference, but just as the guy tramples from side to side, clumsily and a little too heavy for such skinny body as his, the realization comes to Harry with a bang.

“Zayn,” Harry spits out his name before he has a chance to stop himself.

The guy turns around on his heels, eyes widened in puzzlement and mouth parted.

“Sorry,” Harry shakes his head right after. “The dance thing? You were missing at first and then Simon had to…?”

Harry doesn’t finish the explanation because he notices Zayn’s expression that’s turning into something scary movie worth, as if he’s being tortured or mentally abused. It takes less than a second for him to go from normal skinned tone person to worse than pale, his whole body screaming in embarrassment. Harry gradually feels his cheeks fulfilling with hot blood, thinking how horribly misplaced this reminder is for Zayn now, less than an hour he has to go there and prove he’s good enough. That he’s confident enough.

“Oh God, sorry, I didn’t want to, you know,” Harry struggles, he can’t stand the feeling of putting some extra pressure on someone who’s in the same position as he is.

“I mean you did great? Not like I saw how you danced because I had to dance at the same time and I’m not much of a neat dancer myself, actually I’m quite awful, I don’t know why they’d put me in the front…Maybe for a good laugh? Anyway I’m sure you did great? Like, I think you were really brave for coming back and still doing it and I think, actually it gave you some bonus points? Extra attention ‘n stuff, so Simon will definitely remember you? I’m sure you’ll do great.”

Harry says it all in one breath and truthfully, he has never heard Zayn singing before so he has no god damn clue how good he is, but at this moment, it doesn’t really matter because the pain slowly fades away from his cheeks and Harry’s sure he even saw the corners of his lips dribble a little, as if holding back a laugh.

“Thanks,” he says and, indeed, unleashes a genuine, thankful smile.

Harry smiles back at him, automatically. “I’m Harry,” he reaches his hand for a shake.

Zayn eyes him, cautiously, then swipes out the smoke and shakes his hand, quickly, but assertively.

“I know,” he responds and finally keeps his look at Harry for longer than a second or two so Harry can notice the chocolate color freckle in Zayn’s left eye.

“Your supporters. They have some nice T-shirts,” Zayn explains and makes this modest smirk before walks past him to the exit. “Good luck today, Harry.”

And just as Zayn leaves him all alone in the brisk summer air, several flash backs start to fall back in to Harry’s memory and he can put all the pieces together. This wasn’t the first time he saw Zayn and neither was it when the dancing incident happened. He had seen him before, not like talked to him or anything, but just met his eyes for a couple of times. In the line for the bathroom, across the arena café, inside of the waiting rooms, he suddenly recalls it all so clearly, that small freckle and for a boy, some unusually firm lashes that it seems unreal that they hadn’t properly met before. The slight nervous terror in his features, always acting like he’s lost and the habit of lip biting, he had seen it more than a few times and oddly, it feels like Harry has known him for a few years or so.

And since Harry realizes all the previous happenings, he reckons he might as well been unconsciously following Zayn those few minutes ago when he had to rush outside the arena, blindly, almost hypnotized. Those broad shoulders of his, now coming into Harry’s memory like a guide pulling him outside of the building and even if Harry’s eyes didn’t react on that, his body must have perceived the right signals.

\--

When Harry goes back to his family, he feels calmer, almost strangely restful. There’s only a half an hour left until he has to step on that stage again and he doesn’t see Zayn until then anymore or later that day in fact and again, it shouldn’t really matter when so much else is happening, so many life changing moments arriving. It is weird, to see on what your mind focuses in stressful situations, what it filters as important and suddenly Harry feels like he’s gone a little mad because all that his brain can recognize as priority for the next few days is a bridge from hearing that he’s through to the judges houses to seeing Zayn again. A random boy he barely knows. His head or heart or whatever was in charge of his thinking right now just keeps pushing on it stubbornly until when Harry doesn’t see Zayn also the next day and the next, Harry is on a border of feeling possessed or suffering from some kind of weird side effects to the excitation this competition has brought him this far.

Two days later, it all disappears like a bomb explosion though, every little worry, every expectation and every hope clashes into ashes in a matter of seconds. All the dreams drop down from his head down to his heals like someone has just pushed them down by the stares until Harry feels like the weight of him is too heavy to keep holding his body vertically. He should have known this, he _should_ have fucking known this. And for the first time ever, Harry wishes someone would have told him what to do or rather what not to do. Why did he believe in this in the first place?

_“That’s it guys, I’m very sorry. But this is the end of the ride for you.”_

\--

Words flow in mad masses and sounds come out as malformed screams before floor blurs completely and reaches ceiling. As Simon Cowel’s head distorts in the weirdest expressions, Harry prays to gather a strength and keep his insides where they belong – inside of his belly, this is so not the time to take a look at his poor breakfast inside out. He doesn’t even manage to compress his thumbs tightly enough for good luck before it’s all said out loud.

Second chance. A boy band. Judges houses.  _Second chance_.

All subsequently happens in fast forward – several arms thrown around Harry’s waist and two fingernails penetrating in the loop of his belt. Someone’s soft, burning cheek brushing against his ear and Niall’s squeaked  _ohmygod_  being yelled somewhere upon this building. The stress explodes in dust of excitement at the same time he feels the first tear of happiness rolling down his jaw.

They somehow stumble, pull and roll each other to backstage and before there are dozen camera men bouncing around them like bees smelling honey, there’s this sharp bone – a chin or an elbow maybe – digging into Harry’s shoulder. He turns around to freeze completely for a second or five; there’s no appropriate time frequency for this moment, really. So Harry titlts his head back to see Zayn shining his amber eyes at him, slightly crinkled nose and innocent happiness floating through his lip lines like a flower in the river and, for the first time ever since Harry caught his frown what feels like weeks ago, he doesn’t look lost. Thrilled and entirely confused, but safe. Maybe relieved. Like he’s just magically found his home whilst flying down the rabbit hole.

Harry subconsciously mirrors Zayn’s smile and pulls him in a hug with a swing that’s strong and sudden enough for their chests to breathtakingly bump together and even if it hurts a little, Harry still feels the corners of his lips rising up like a coiled rubber.

He definitely believes in destiny today. And when the two of them need to be separated by Liam’s strong hand crushing in between their glued bodies, because apparently they hadn’t moved for a little too long, Harry also believes in physics and chemistry and all those scientific, meaningless terms. Sublimation, crystallization.

Magnetization. Yeah, today he believes.  

 

 

***

_You’re through to the live shows._

Nothing has been the same ever since and Harry couldn’t be happier about it. Meaning, it’s a haoss, a complete mess in his head and all around him, but there has never been a more exciting mess than this in his whole life.

There is no way how to explain the color of emotions he’s going through in those couple of weeks, because, truthfully, it’s nothing he had ever imagined. Life is suddenly a constant run, a suit case and good bye’s and it’s a lot to take in once Harry’s laid down about to sleep and tries to pool it all together. It doesn’t seem like a new experience, it seems like a new life, even though it was just the idea of it yet. They hadn’t even had their first live show done when Harry already had the taste of a proper singing career on the tip of his tongue. So many things he would love to freeze in his memory, to stop the time and just breathe. Enjoy. Look around and say, yeah, this is bloody amazing and this is _my_ life.

First interviews, first harmonies, first realizations. Realizations about how he’s probably the luckiest guy in the world right now, how thankful he is for the other four boys not being jerks, but genuinely the most awesome people you could wish for to be in all of this together. All four are completely different characters, but that’s what the magic was about really. It almost scared them how well they blended together and how they’d be ready to use the term ‘best friend’ after about two weeks of knowing each other. How good they sounded together. How good they looked together. But most importantly, how good they felt around each other.

So, there is a hell of a lot to take in, mostly incredible and happy tear worth stuff, but there are still some things that Harry puts at the back of his head filed under _not now_. Like, what happens if they get eliminated in one of the very first weeks? What happens if this isn’t meant to be? What if, this is all just an optical illusion and Simon repeating that there’s something special about the five of them together is just a second hand bullshit? What IF, the happier, the more excited Harry is getting about this new found One Direction dream, the lower he’s going to fall and get hurt?

And then, somewhere much deeper, much further than these files, further than his rational thinking and actual consciousness maybe, he puts the idea of Zayn. Not Zayn as a person, but the thing he feels towards him, the untouchable, indescribable thing. It is a thing, at least Harry calls it that way for now. He has no explanation for it yet how for example, he just misses him like all the time, ever since he first saw him at the backyard of the arena.

It’s weird. Creepy weird. Bloody _scary_ weird.

It’s like Zayn is this one huge mystery and Harry’s suddenly the Sherlock that needs to crack the shell and investigate the fragile inside. Sometimes, he would keep asking Zayn all sorts of questions until Zayn would just frown at him in such deep angularity that Harry had to push himself to shut up and leave him alone, before Zayn would politely ask him to stay either way. And that was the other problem. As moody and concluded Zayn’s body language was and as deep his frowns could turn, he always, _always_ softened once Harry said he’d rather leave him alone now. It wasn’t a simple affability, moreover, it genuinely seemed like Zayn didn’t mind Harry’s company with all his childish, pushy curiosity. And if you couldn’t tell that after his voice tone then you could see it in the corner of his eye that practically begged Harry to stay around. Come closer. Keep bubbling and scratching the surface of his shell.

It had all turned into a hot ‘n cold kind of game between the two of them and Harry has never been more anxious about winning over someone than feels towards Zayn.

\--

It’s unfortunate as well.

Sorely inexcusable and simply not how it’s supposed to be, because the bright hazel _has_ its dark streaks hiding under the shell of insecurity. And the shy charm not that rarely reshapes into a gloomy cloud smelling like cigarettes and that god damn _Gucci_ cologne that has stubbornly impregnated in the nape of Harry’s neck as if it would be falling down of his curls and sticking at the first peace of flesh it could find (it might as well be the truth, if you count the times Zayn brushes his fingers through Harry’s hair daily).

And it keeps getting worse in the matter of how they would always end up falling into each other’s space. Like getting stuck on some sort of a limbo that consists of brushing knees and rubbing shoulders. Perhaps, a habit or a routine, but occasionally you get tired of routines, don’t you? Well, it’s not the case. It’s the complete opposite, actually because all Harry can feel is craving for more. Like, Zayn would tease him with a small morning touch of his pinkie upon Harry’s knuckles and he would end up dreaming about the two of them handcuffed on a desert island later that night. It’s all some kind of a riddle to figure out and it’s much harder to do that than to admit that it’s not just a coincidence of them becoming a two piece anymore. It couldn’t be, not with all the heat and affection that keep bouncing between their eyes and skin, making them anxious. Greedy.

_Just a little closer…_

They would start the photo shoot at the very sides of the five peace row and still end up next to each other in the middle - a chin on other’s shoulder or a thumb scratching other’s hipbone. The smaller touches, the more intimacy. The more fear and bewilderment growing in Harry’s head and it’s not like Zayn seemed to have a clear sight about all of this either. Actually, for most of the time he seemed terrified, but then he’d also end up craving for more.

Like that time when the two of them ended up sharing a bed in Harry’s step dad’s Bungalo house? Which turned out to be another chapter of the _Zayn &Harry somehow always next to each other_ chronicles. All of it caused by Niall falling asleep on two mattresses at the same time - his and Zayn’s - splashed out at the warm space in front of the fireplace where he supposedly was watching a recorded football game while Zayn was having a quick smoke at the back of the house.

“Should we…move him?” Zayn whispers while he, Harry and Anne are all staring down at his flushed cheeks and the bacon crisp that apparently didn’t make its way to Niall’s mouth and ended up on the pillow right next to him.

“It’s been a long day,” Anne says, leaning down and cautiously covering Niall’s shoulders with a blanket and patting his back gently, “let him be.”

Either Liam or Louis does an expressively loud snore somewhere from the corner of the room and Zayn already accepts the thought of a long night.

“You know what, why don’t you two rather take mine and Robin’s bed tonight and I’ll sleep in Harry’s?” Anne says, through a wide yawn and puts a soft kiss on Harry’s head.

“Mhm,” is all Harry can make of an answer with the exhaustion falling over his shoulders as well.

They’re all dead tired from spending the entire day in the fresh air so there’s not much of talking between him and Zayn other than _“’s it okay if we share the blanket or-? –yeah”_. And before Harry can ask which side of the bed he prefers Zayn’s already curled all knees reaching his nose way and leaving deep exhales in the sheets.

Harry lays down next to him and takes a small, attentive look simply to do the photo memory thing and to perpetuate this small moment in his head forever. He has no clue why. But when Zayn’s thick lashes slightly tremble and his features soften to the most delicate and gentle level possible, it doesn’t seem to do anything else, but make him look even more beautiful than when he’s awake. And it becomes practically impossible for Harry not to let himself do the following. He leans closer to put a short, subtle kiss on the corner of Zayn’s mouth and turns his back on him right ahead, in fear of him waking up from it and doing that dense frown thing.

But he doesn’t, as Harry can hear the silent, deep breathing continuing in the same rhythm, not making any pauses.

So Harry first wakes up around that time sun is just rising outside, the dim light making its way through the floral purple curtains and he finds himself facing Zayn again, their hands right on top of each other’s under the blanket. He falls back asleep in a sweet notion as soon as he realizes that it’s Zayn’s firm hand on his, not the way around.

The second time he wakes up is from Louis’ loud laugh that comes from the other room as it sounds they’re the last two still asleep. He wakes up with the same sweet notion he felt a few hours ago as his nose is only inches away from Zayn’s, his arm hanging over Harry’s waist and their feet tangled in some serious knot, keeping them warm. So Harry was sure then, even though asleep and unconscious, Zayn wants more of it as well.

_Just a little closer…_

 

***

 

If Harry’s aunt wouldn’t had insisted on the third glass of vine for her and Anne, maybe Harry would have left the restaurant earlier. If he had followed the rest of the contestants to the bar right after the show had ended and started to spill drinks at the same time as the rest of his band mates did, maybe he wouldn’t remember a thing this morning. Maybe, if he hadn’t forgot his beanie at the toilet’s cabin and walked back for it in a rush before someone else’s piss or puke ends up on it, he hadn’t run into Zayn’s wasted body. But there is never _maybe’s_ or _what if’s_ with them, Harry has learned it now, in quite the hard way. It just happens. Gravity or destiny or God knows what, it simply happens.

It wouldn’t mean a single thing if Harry hadn’t caught himself absorbing that one feeling that took him by such a surprise that he had to leave the bar for his own good, or he’d probably got himself that drunk that his head and blood would end up consisting of two thirds of alcohol and a one third of blurry, desperate thoughts of how to forget everything faster, more effectively. That feeling he got when Katy Campbell was leaning on him, fully, the smell of her raspberry shampoo coming in sweet, ethereal waves as the wind played hide & seek around the two of them. How she tilted her head to whisper his name, practically purring those two r’s and blending them together, naturally. How delicate she was with all of it, kept a good piece of cake to herself and that’s what drove Harry to that feeling. The unknown - her volatile touches that Harry could barely feel on his skin, but still. He saw her finger sliding upon his forearm and felt the fabric of her dress grazing between his thighs and yes, oh God, yes. Those were the first real butterflies, the sort of tickling on a borderline of punching butterflies in his belly and a complete dehydration in his throat, Harry thought he’s going to choke of how breathless he felt.

Harry has had that feeling another few times with another few girls, each time very different, very considerate. It wasn’t supposed to be that intimate or that sexual, but it had to be an explosion, that sort of bomb dropping on your head down to your pants feeling. And Harry loved it, he _adored_ that sensational bit of drowning into someone else’s touch. Their smell on his skin or even the look in their eyes, a completely different one than he has ever witnessed. A private party look, you may say. It might not last too long, but it doesn’t have to really, because it kicks you instantly. S.O.S’s you that you’ve stumbled upon something special. _Someone_ special. And you can’t really predict when or _if_ it is going to happen even if you fancy the person, it doesn’t work that way.

You can’t provide an explosion, especially when your brain has blocked all the previous warning bells your heart tried to send there. So when Harry runs into a staggering body at the back of the bar lobby and forthwith looks up for an apology wink, he can’t believe himself how quickly he stifles down the ticking bomb.

Zayn swaying from one side to another with his usually so ringing hazel eyes now completely misty. The mop of his dark hair in a wet mess, heavy lashes and a skew, defiant smile - Harry has never seen him this way before. He looks needy and completely unpredictable which is not really a Zayn thing to be honest. Not like Zayn is a prospective person, so far from it actually, but it’s just that you can’t really tell what he’s feeling towards you unless you’ve managed to break the ice and become best friends with him or simply because of certain circumstances that have lead you two to spending so much time together that he gives in, eventually. But right now, Zayn’s an opened book that shoots straight arrows of fire, a blatant hunger for touch in his wasted limbs and surpluses of flirtatious art popping up in the blurry hazel rings. In other words, Zayn wants, he _burns_ for kisses and tight touches. For all sorts of closeness.

His somewhat grabbing hands are munching in the air searching for steadiness until they end up settling down on Harry’s hips and a muted –no–, is the only thing Harry can hear himself repeating.

Zayn instead, lights up in a genuine devotion right after he has observed that it’s Harry he’s ran into and sluggishly wraps an arm around Harry’s waist to pull him closer and lean in for a whisper full of _Cuba Libra_ scent. And even though the place is silent enough to talk in a normal voice there, Zayn still whispers the ‘ _hey, you’_ in his lowest, rawest register.

No. No, no, _no_.

One hand still on Harry’s hipbone, there’s a thumb rubbing against it while the other is kind of penetrating into the place where his shirt has nestled to his back, Zayn is not wasting a second for a skin to skin manifestation. Harry shuts his eyes, tries to become numb and maybe, if he was senseless this would’ve worked. Maybe Harry could push Zayn away, slip out of his touch and kill the bloody butterfly at the bottom of his belly without looking back. But, for sure, it’s not how it works and he feels so far from senseless that every sound, every touch seems to be coming in in a triple hit.

The smell of Zayn’s cologne mashed up with a good amount of alcohol and someone else’s – much softer and feminine – perfume, it glides right up to Harry’s nose at the same time his stubble brushes against his own jaw and leaves an itchy, almost soar feeling in his skin. And just as Harry repeatedly swears to himself and thinks, it couldn’t get any worse (better?) than this, Zayn starts to hum along the remixed Pink Floyd song they’re playing at the bar. Then blindly reaches down for Harry’s hand to create some sort of clumsy slow dance partnership position and moderately sways the two of them in the rhythm of the beat. Their torsos immediately glue together and just as Zayn steadies himself placing both of his feet right next to Harry’s, his forehead naturally falls down so Harry can feel the thick line of sweat meeting his collar bone.

It’s not a wild dance you get pulled into and don’t see an exit, it’s a silent shifting on site that probably looks like hell of a humorous show from aside, yet Harry seems to be paralyzed. They barely move, with Zayn following each of Harry’s steps and keeping their feet together and Harry doesn’t even have his arms around Zayn, but _fuck_.

Zayn keeps humming the song under his breath that ends up as a moist air dissolving through Harry’s shirt meanwhile Harry keeps repeating the _no’s_ in his head like an unholy prayer. It works, he thinks, as he places his hands on Zayn’s tummy ready to gently push him away, but just as he’s about to do it and leave him to flush this moment in plenty of tequila rows, Zayn picks up his head. He finds Harry’s eyes easily and creates this foxy sort of expression that will probably hunt Harry forever, because that was _the_ _moment_ , the real culmination of what has been growing between the two of them since the day they met.

One side of his lips picked up in a grin, and the glassy eyes boring into Harry’s as if he’d just found a fortune worth treasure there, he wraps his hands around Harry’s wrists and cautiously lowers them so Harry’s hands are placed on Zayn’s hips as well. Then, and Harry can do a full-fledged confession of it now – he loses it completely and utterly. Zayn nods contently and moves his hips, and hips only, forward so that their lengths are fully pressed together one by one and Harry automatically pulls backwards, but not too fast so they end up swaying in some sort of weird samba unison.

The bomb drops.

Harry’s jaw falls open because he feels the growing tightness in his pants, he feels like screaming and laughing and crying all at the same time, because…Well, does this need an explanation really? He’s looking at Zayn, the _Zayn_ Zayn, his band mate Zayn, one of his new best friends Zayn, and looking at him like he’s the golden fruit of his desires. Craving to kiss away the drunk grin on his face and pinch the skin of his hips so tightly that the half moons of his nails would penetrate through his T-shirt. He wants Zayn, he wants him in the most intimate and fervid way, how is this a thing to comprehend even?

Harry feels his expression turning into something truly terrified, but apparently it amuses Zayn somehow because he only pulls Harry closer and smiles even wider.

“I push you pull, yeah?” Zayn whispers, a slow, breathless sound as they keep swaying their hips.

And that’s the last for Harry before the lights go off and he is gone. Literally _gone_. He somehow slips out of Zayn’s hold and mumbles a couple of letters that supposedly meant excuse me.

He doesn’t remember how he got out of the bar or did anyone notice him running out of there in panic. If anyone took pictures of him when he got outside or if Zayn even tried to follow him.

Probably not.

\--

It’s not supposed to be like this, not _again_.

Harry wakes up from the same feeling he’s been waking up a one too many times than it would be explainable. A warm tingle in his fingertips that blends together with a soft, silent snore coming right under his ear, through the pillow. He brushes his nose and lashes against the sheets twice before slips his jaw over the edge of the second floor bed and unwillingly opens one eye in a squeezed, dozy manner.

The view is ridiculously familiar now. His right arm hanging down over the bedside like a lifeless limb with his fingertips only half an inch away from where Zayn’s lips are placed; his tepid breath causing the dulcet shivers all over his hand as each of his exhales meets Harry’s skin right away. And it’s not only about how Harry would never, _never_ fall asleep on his belly before, but suddenly wakes up like this every second morning. Or how it’s more than a mystery or an obnoxious coincidence that even though Harry’s falling arm could still be somehow explainable with bullshit like too narrow of a bed or something, the fact that Zayn’s face would always be in the same position and angle, as if his lips would lay there, waiting for Harry’s hand to drop down, heavy and a little too cold, is just above unlikely.

_“You push, I pull, yeah?”_

The memory of Zayn's drunk voice and the following panicking short laughter strikes through him like a glass breaking. It's too early for a realization that he was right with this, with all of it. With all of his wasted honesty, he was more honest than a sober Harry for the last couple of weeks. 

On the one hand, Harry could laugh about this, accept that world has its own ways how to play out jokes and weird coincidences happen all the time. Like _all_ the time. And it’s not a tragedy, to somehow always end up brushing knees with Zayn even though Harry couldn’t remember sitting next to him or feel the touch of someone’s skin and know it with one hundred percent confidence that it’s Zayn way before he could see it with his own eyes. On the other hand?

This is so far away from a joke that it actually hurts, because how else would you explain the thrill of this feeling, this _something_. Like he had become this little pin point sweeping through a handmade map where he could go in detours and detours and would still bump his forehead against Zayn’s shoulder in a middle of a desert. It’s not funny, it’s captivating, addicting sort of.

And now when it’s not only about that, now when it has hit Harry directly, he knows that it’s not just about those small touches. He wants more, so much more of it, like to maybe grab Zayn by his shoulders, to clutch his nails at the back of his neck and make him all shivery. To kiss him deep and real and uncovered. Taste the curl of his tongue and slide his hands up and down Zayn’s scalp while doing that.

The list of the things grow with each day, each time Zayn laughs crinkling his nose too god damn heavenly or looks at Harry with a darker, more desiring stare than it is allowed, really. The list grows, the amount of questions grow and the lust. The lust _definitely_ grows.

_“You push, I pull, yeah?”_

\--

Of course it seems like the very end when they get voted off the X Factor. As if, this was all a temporary game that is cut off the minute they have packed their bags and left the contestants house not because they didn’t win, but because it meant that they’re somehow not enough. Not enough for a favorite or someone who people want to see getting a record deal and make an album and music videos and all of that.

Harry, personally, feels terrified. The idea of trying to make this band work either way and not succeeding, because no one has enough of a belief in it or they’re simply lacking any kind of experience in making real music is like an immersed anchor. Then there’s this ugly picture of them slowly, gradually fading away like all those forgotten names in the music industry tend to do and turn into _‘remember there was that five peace band on X Factor? –kind of…barely’._

But objectively, behind the fear there are three huge holes in this scenario. Firstly, they’ve become too close to each other. Close enough that there is no actual chance they’d just walk out of the spotlight and pretend this all has never happened or meant enough for them because it has turned into a higher level of a friendship than people normally imagine one to be. Shared dreams and expectations and numerous nights spent full of talks about distant imagines of having their own headlining tours with people singing along lyrics to their songs can’t be turned into nothing. You simply can’t delete a bond this tenacious, you just cannot. Secondly, they have fans. Like, proper dedicated fans who are ready to stalk them and wait outside of their houses just to have a glimpse of them, but most importantly, to want more from them. Not just the tour all of the contestants are going to, but their own shows. People tweeting and asking about how their sound would be like and if there’s a future for One Direction are the biggest stimulus one could possibly ask for. It’s like an ignited match ready to grow into a bigger flame that entire social media thing had created for them. Twitter, Facebook and all of it was going in a self-promoting action that gave a real hope to them, another step higher. And it still causes chills to Harry each time he reads someone’s comment that sounds as eager to make One Direction happen as his own inner voice screamed for it. Like _really_ happen.

Thirdly, two days after the show has ended they get a call from Simon. They meet up and get asked about things like if they’re willing to catch and jump upon this other platform and maybe have a chance to prove themselves worthy. _Become this generation’s pop band?_ The second Simon says that exact sentence Harry’s insides flop around and he feels his palms sweating like insane.

The dream isn’t dead. In fact, it had just born and that was the first time Harry realized they’re not going anywhere and if they’re lucky enough, they’ll be there for a long run. Simon reveals he’s ready to give them a record deal and the first thing Harry knows he’s whirled into a five peace hug covered in shaky breaths and sonorous laughter. The second is that they’re practically living at the studio and learning how to create their own sound and their own music. Their own dream, after all.

\--

They actually do live at the studio at one certain point. Well, not like all suitcases and their own pillows live, but occasionally stay there so they could do an early start since this all takes a hell of a lot time for such green beans in the process of making their own album as the five of them are. And it’s a lot of work, but undeniably – even more fun and excitement than anything else.

So it’s been a couple of months of it, they have their mattresses scattered around the studio and rows of unfinished coffee cups on every other corner until the last and final song list cut has been made so there’s a good reason for a celebration . It’s just that, everyone’s either too tired or too attached to the inspiring vibe around the studio space to actually go somewhere else so they do it the good old X Factor Sunday night celebratory way with a few boxes of beer and cheesy word games.

„I have never ever danced with someone in a moonlight,” Zayn declears in a low, muted voice and the energy around them drops immediately even before he has a chance to take a sip from his half finished beer.

“Why’d you have to go there?” Louis whines and gestures his hands in the air.

“Where _there_?” Zayn apes the word.

“Like we’re somewhat serious here.”

“Why can’t I be serious about it?”

“You don’t even dance, Zayn. Like at all.”

“Exactly,” Zayn points his bottle at Louis.

They all stare down at him – puzzled – and Niall does this short laughter that sounds more of a silence filler than anything else until Liam wakes up and finally breaks it.

“I have actually, danced in the moonlight. With someone,” he explains and takes a sip from his sider that he claims has an almost good zero alcohol in it, yet his eyes have gone all glassy.

Louis keeps eyeing Zayn in half a frown before he gives up on it since Zayn’s numbly staring at the neck of his bottle. He turns back at Liam with that expression that can only mean Liam being teased for the rest of the twenty minutes at least.

“Were you five?” Louis asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Fourteen, actually.”

“Was that your sister?”

Liam’s nostrils go a little wider when he does a skew smile at Louis. “No.”

“Mom?”

“A _girl_. A very gorgeous one. Jealous maybe, Tomlinson?”

Louis snorts, sincerely. “Not really, Payno. More like curious. Did you serenade her? Wait no, let me guess. Timberlake’s dance routine?”

Liam furiously shifts in his chair like he’s about to either fall out of it or brake it in anger with a single push of his thighs.

The banter goes on in the usual flow where Louis comes up with one come back better than the previous one and Liam looking more desperate with each second until it seems like he’s in actual pain and Niall starts to shake from laughing cramps. Harry watches it all from behind this time as he feels he’s gone two beers too far at this point, his view reshaping in a hazy cloud and the upper part of his stomach is definitely asking for a time out, signalizing with small waves of bubbling belches.

Gradually, he starts to hear the conversation somewhere from a distant place, like he’s in another room or he’d only be able to hear echoes of their voices and slowly, his eyelids bulb into these two heavy pieces of tired skin. His thread of mind wonders so far away that it’s hard to focus on any kind of thought itself and when he tries to blink the vertigo away, Harry catches himself in a familiar state - drowned in Zayn’s eyes. They seem completely clear compared to his own and drilling through Harry’s pupils with profound, suspicious look. He rises an eyebrow at Harry, then the other one as if making a question mark with his face and Harry finally manages to blink.

It’s hard sometimes, to actually remember that it’s not always entirely normal, their _thing_. But if it’s hard to keep the track of what’s acceptable and what is just too much of a meaningful look or too delicate of a touch then it is impossible to do it with a blur upon his brain.

When it’s nearly past 4am, the room finally cleans up, gets quieter step by step and Harry sits back like watching the movie in fast forward where he is the only one staying in one place. Firstly, because he gets this hunch that if he moves anywhere or most importantly – moves vertically – that will only lead to one point which would probably look like him falling back horizontally on the ground, if luck’s with him then with no bones broken. And secondly, Zayn hasn’t moved a tiny bit as well, just nodding at whoever wished him a good night and keeps shooting small glances at Harry as if checking if he hasn’t locked his eyes on him again.

Finally, they wish a goodnight to Liam and Louis who stagger away around an hour after Liam’s tried to squeeze a fresh slice of lemon on top of Louis’ head and they’re done with the world’s weirdest arm wrestling marathon that somehow reminded more of some sort of cockfighting than anything to do with arm on arm duel.

For the next half an hour there’s three of them with Niall who’s stringing his guitar carelessly, reflecting a few tunes from their upcoming debut album. Hums them in a voice that’s definitely around two tones lower and raspier than his usual soft high register so it causes a couple of giggles between the guitar sounds and the bit of a lethargic atmosphere that had landed on top of them. But even Niall’s endless pocketful of energy slowly burns out until his fingers can’t match the right strings on his guitar anymore and the notes come out all not so tuneful. So he scuffs away with a half yawned _‘g’night, lads’_ and leaves the two of them in a blank silence.

Harry’s head has stopped spinning long time ago now, but his stomach somehow keeps grizzling about the amount of beers that he’s got down so there’s still this uncomfortable overpowering need to stay rigid at this chair.

Zayn instantly gets himself up though, reaching for something in his back pocket and when he’s grabbed the lighter Harry already starts to plan a less painful way how to get himself up as well, because this seems like the obvious _smoke & straight to bed_ ritual for Zayn and staying all alone here wouldn’t exactly be much of a fun. But then Zayn kind of freezes midway to consider something, scratches the back of his head and turns on his heels, lazily. He eyes Harry in the familiar deep stare which causes a particularly long crease in his forehead this time.

„What?” Harry asks, clenching his fingers around the half empty bottle in his hands.

“Nothing. It’s just – ,“ Zayn hesitates and does an extended sigh.

“It’s just..?”

“The look you give me sometimes. It’s strange,” Zayn bites down on his bottom lip and plays with his lighter a couple of times before joins Harry and sits down next to where Niall had left the pile of pillows.

Harry’s not sure if he should hide the smirk that’s creeping upon his jaw or just let go of it, but since Zayn looks far too stiff for a reaction like that, he swallows it.

“What do you mean, strange?”

“Well, you know.”

“I do?”

“I think you do.”

Harry shrugs and reflexively takes a long sip from the drink. “You’d have to go a bit more precisely there.”

It grows into a dim silence then filled with Zayn gazing his jaw at Harry like he’s about to…well, it’s hard to tell. Impossible, actually, but it turns into some sort of anxious, fired up expression.

“So you like games, Harry?” Zayn asks like he’s just switched himself into another person and this one sounds on the verge of furious.

“Pardon?”

“Games. You like to play them?”

“What are you on about?”

“You know _exactly_ what I am about here.”

Harry straightens himself up in the plastic armchair like he’s just been awakened, because of Zayn’s entire attitude change. And it’s not the alcohol this time, it looks more like a long burgeoning curiosity that’s been teased by Harry’s apparently too obvious of a stare or something like that.

“Alright so what? You’re allowed to do all those weird mind games whilst I’m banned to even look at you?”

“ _What_ mind games?”

“Please, like I’m the only player here,” Harry snorts.

Zayn’s shoulders slightly relax, but his face goes all wickedly. “Alright. But I hate being a blind player,” he confesses.

Harry frowns about it because he can swear that Zayn’s getting this all wrong now.

“I’m not trying to blind you, I just - ,” Harry shakes his head, feeling how the last sip of beer gives him a sudden, unpleasant punch in his stomach, “I have no clue where’s this conversation going even.”

“You never answered my question,” Zayn reminds him. “The long stares, like you’re gonna kiss me or something?”

“Is that what it looks like to you?”

“Is that what you _want_ it to look like?” Zayn paraphrases it and Harry’s insides do a flip. An actual three hundred and sixty degree spin and he automatically wraps his arms around himself and locks fingers behind his back.

Zayn is truthfully asking Harry a question he answered himself a way too long ago and has been wishing Zayn to discover that idea for like some good two forever’s. But before Harry manages to come up with the smartest answer ever that wouldn’t sound like a plain ‘yes’, but would definitely _mean_ a clear ‘yes’, he feels a second flip in his lower tummy that pops upside like a fired bullet and Harry cramps his lips together as soon as he can feel a salty taste in his mouth.

“Are you..?” Zayn’s furrowed stare lowers to where Harry’s hugging his ribcage in order to postpone the nauseous state.

“Puke, yes.”

Zayn jumps up from the pillows in a quick panic, spinning around himself with mashing hands in the air and looking for something that would be a better choice to puke on than Harry’s own shoe.

“How’s that possible even from those three beers or something,” he mumbles in a hasty movement as he grabs Niall’s breakfast bowl from the top of the loudspeakers.

Zayn rushes to hand it to Harry and once he gets to see the sight of the small bits of this morning’s corn flake surpluses soaked entirely with milk, it is enough for the last punch to knock him out. It’s unpleasant and embarrassing at the same time once Harry can feel the pesky, thick mass leaving his throat until it becomes soar.

“I had like eight,” he groans, whipping his mouth with the back of his palm. “You slept on the first half, remember?”

There’s no response, but Harry can feel Zayn squatting right beside him, putting a warm, firm hand on the small of his back and starting to pat him up and down in a soothing touch.

“Yeah,” he sighs when he’s sure Harry’s done here and slowly toes the bowl further, making sure he doesn’t spill anything in his way.

“Sorry,” Harry murmurs, taking an elusive glance at it.

“Please,” Zayn shakes his head, “happens to everyone. Let’s get you to bed, yeah?”

Harry nods and he thought that it’s some kind of an expression to say, but Zayn is _actually_ getting Harry to bed. He wraps one of his arms around his waist and holds him up like he’s about to break his leg other way and it’s a bit humorous in a matter that Harry actually feels fine, almost fresh with his cleaned guts. He is dead tired though so the feeling is too enjoyable – the weight of him fully leaned on Zayn’s side and their bodies crushed together in a tight pattern – so there’s no way Harry’s not playing along.

Zayn leads him to the bathroom, waits for Harry to brush his teeth “ _for his own next morning good_ ” and then pilots him back to the bedroom with a single hand on his shoulder left, but still. It causes the weirdest and most sudden addiction to Harry, the way how he feels all protected by Zayn, how he sees the white concern in his eyes and how quickly Zayn switched the gears to be there for him, looking at Harry like he’s about to be operated or something. How soft Zayn became, with the gently touches and the purring tone of his voice. And Harry realizes how this only means a deeper falling into the unknown – to wish for more than kisses now, but for real affection. To wish for something he’s not even sure exists, really.

“Okay?” Zayn makes sure for the tenth of time, but Harry smiles like it’s still the first.

“Yeah.”

“Alright,” he holds his hand on the light until switches it out and the room falls into the dark. “Goodnight, curly.”

“Zayn?” Harry responds as it is way easier like this. When he can’t really see him anymore.

“Yeah?”

“It’s not how that conversation should have finished, you know.”

“Who says it’s finished?”

Harry can hear the smirk in Zayn’s voice and mirrors it, half asleep.

But the night does its own good or in this case, harm really. They would keep the long glances and make them more knowing, more telling, but it would never go back to the place where Zayn actually asked if Harry’s been inviting him for a kiss. It never goes back to anywhere near of Zayn being that outright or eager and that’s where Harry understands what Zayn meant by saying he doesn’t like to be the blind player, because he _owns_ the game. Or at least he thinks he does, because it becomes a bit of a hell for Harry to read him.

It is exhausting, to be honest. They play around for weeks, for months with jumping back and forward and the lines blend in too much of a mess. How’s it okay to sit on each other’s laps in the middle of an interview because it’s a _mate_ thing to do for all five of them and how’s it totally not okay to fall asleep with his head in Zayn’s lap for the fourth time this week on their way home from a day full of interviews. Because, no, Zayn’s fingers fondling the warm place behind Harry’s earlobe down to where his curls meet his neck whilst he’s asleep apparently is not a _mate_ thing.

The _thing_ turns into a whirlwind that’s filled with midway cut touches and glares that could burn a hole in steel until Harry feels like he’s gonna need to either somehow, mystically delete this entire idea and emotion he holds towards Zayn from his consciousness or he’s going to explode himself.

And he explodes.

As soon as his lips meet Zayn’s for the first time.

\--

There are many kind of first kisses. The so called right ones that would ramify in cases like the ending of wonderful, fluid first date or the second or third or whenever one of the two chooses to break the ice and make the first step happen. Or it could also be sudden fulfillment for a long waited kiss that simply happens and causes the greatest fireworks that exist in the emotion world. The wrong ones, in the contrary would be the one sided kisses like where you reach this intimacy level, but instantly realize from that kiss that that particular person wasn’t meant for you. Or maybe, the really drunk ones and not because of the fact that your head might be spinning, but that you can’t feel the real essence of it in a state like that. Or those kisses that only give you the carnal satisfaction that’s mainly done as a foreplay to the upcoming sex and nothing more.

First kisses in the dark. Kisses at the back of the school yard, kisses in proms and on other’s weddings. There are a million kind of first kisses, but none treats you with a bigger contentment than the kind of where you know you would never in a million years change it back for anything. No matter if you date the person or is it a wrong or a forbidden kiss – it wouldn’t mean a thing for that brief aftermath. The ones that hit the breath out of your lungs and for a split second nothing in this world is more valuable than the other person’s lips. Where you can sit back and think _woah_. How did we never try that before?

The first time you kiss someone is probably the most important moment in a developing relationship, even if it’s not going the usual way or is as fucked up as Zayn and Harry’s is. More important than the first joke you share and see the other person laughing sincerely, eyes fully squeezed from the truthful reaction or the first time you share small touches like cupping their knee or caressing the lower part of their back. It’s the first _real_ intimacy, feeling the warmth of their mouth and how your tongues slip out, cautious at first. And how it gives you the instant realization about your chemistry and compatibility. Drastically speaking – it either founders or blasts the two of you and there’s really no backing off then.

\--

It’s nearly one am when Harry opens the door and feels that it’s bloody freezing outside. His head pulsing from the drowsiness and they have to get up in like four hours to catch an eleven hour flight to their trip to America, but then he finds Zayn out there all alone in the backyard of Liam’s house. With his back turned at the windows, cuddled under the sleeping bag and wiping off a cigarette.

“Hey,” Harry whispers through a yawn when he’s approached Zayn close enough for him to notice Harry and remove one of the headphones.

“Hey.”

“It’s like one am?”

“Yeah.”

“ _Yeah_?” Harry repeats and Zayn just does this _mm_ sound in response.

“Why are you up?”

Another hum which isn’t much of a conscious sound what it seems like since Zayn keeps staring at the untied laces of his sneakers.

“Okay then,” Harry rolls his eyes and feels his legs shaking very threateningly from the cold crushing his knees so he grabs the nearest plastic chair and puts it down next to where Zayn is sitting.

“Can’t sleep?” Harry says a little louder when he’s leaned into Zayn’s side which seems to break the thread of his thoughts.

“Not much. You too?”

It’s clear that Zayn hasn’t taken a serious look at Harry then.

“I _was_. Just went to the loo and saw you’re not there.”

Zayn nods stolidly and they instantly fall back into a silence.

“Is everything okay?”

Zayn shrugs on it. Just scuffs about it and doesn’t even look like he’s considering to hum back at this nevertheless to actually answer.

“Zayn?”

He turns at him, unwillingly, but flickers his lashes so quickly up and back down that Harry doesn’t even manage to eye him properly.

“ _Zayn_ ,” he echoes his name and a weird déjà vu hits Harry. The way he recalls Zayn looked like when he first saw him back at the auditions: full of fear and perplexity and a cup of panic.

“You know I’m not a stranger to you anymore, don’t you?”

Zayn nods really slowly and swallows with a muffled sound as if he was about to be questioned in front of the court or something.

“What is it?” Harry asks once more.

There’s no change for another few seconds as Zayn keeps still until finally sighs expressively. Like does a really long inhale then holds it up there and shuts his eyes for a split second to let it all out and turn at Harry with his entire body – all stiff shoulders and hands pulled in stunted fists.

“It just gets hard for me sometimes,” he says, admittedly.

“I know.”

“Do you really?”

“Did you miss the part about you being in a band with other four people?”

“No, I mean. You all are different,” Zayn confesses. “The way you deal with this. I’m not like you, I can’t act like that.”

“Like what?”

“Like I’m made for this? Because I’m not.”

“None of us were _made_ for this.”

“Oh, God, Harry, have you seen yourself out there? You were probably born for it.”

It warms Harry’s stomach a little, he can’t deny it when Zayn says that. But the way how he does it, with a complete shadow over his cheek just pokes him in his chest.

“None of us know everything yet, you can’t expect to get used to it this early.”

“It’s not about that,” Zayn shakes his head and drops his eyes back down, “I’m not a natural, not even close. I can’t do public speeches and I’m terrible with people judging me for who I am. It’s not right.”

It’s only then when Harry glances at Zayn’s lap and notices the phone he’s nervously throwing from one hand to the other and it’s not hard to read his face when he recognizes the affliction Harry has gone through, quite a few times.

“Don’t you know you can’t read that shit?” he asks, pointing at the phone.

Zayn’s eyes regretfully lock on the black screen.

“Look, I was just going through this and you know, the heck, they even got me crying on camera so everyone knows. Those comments are toxic? And they’re only made by people who want to get into your head. They got me then and I know it hurts like hell.”

Harry watches Zayn’s eyes flittering in painful nervousness and Harry remembers the main thing he learned when he went through it all himself. Still does, occasionally.

“Hey. You have to remember who you are, yeah?”

Zayn looks back at him. “Yeah.”

“And you’re proud of yourself? And what we’re doing here?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then forget it. Forget whatever you’ve read because it doesn’t matter. You _have_ to believe it doesn’t matter. Or else you’re gonna cry and somehow that’ll make a good story to show on a film about us.”

Zayn unleashes a weak smile and shakes his head. “Doubt that.”

It’s actually reaching a point where Harry slightly can’t feel his legs from the freezing air so he’s blaming it on the cold that he’s sitting with his knees glued to Zayn’s like they’d be tied down together.

“It’s just weird to think of it,” Zayn whispers with a new breath, “that this is going to be my life now.”

“Girls screaming they love you everywhere you go? Horrible, I know.”

Zayn snorts once more but his eyes rather darken than light up from it.

“More like the part where I’m always gonna be away from home and my piece. And comfort. Just out there sitting like an animal in a zoo where everyone stares and waits for you to entertain them.”

Harry frowns at the last bit, because of the way Zayn says it in a slight disgust and how it sounds like someone has been forcing him to do everything they’ve done this far. “Is that really how you feel like?”

“No, well. I don’t even know?”

Harry sits back now and his back meets the cold of the plastic chair. Zayn eyes him and his shoulders seemingly drop the way they do when he’s about to apologize or beg. Either way, the pose seems distressful.

“Wait,” he leans closer and places his hand on Harry’s thigh which is colder than the air, but still manages to do an electrified warmth upon his legs. “I don’t regret a thing, okay? And I love you all. And I love to sing and that’s never going to change.”

He sounds as downcast as his posture looks like and it’s a bit hard to handle it for Harry, him so brittle trying to look so fine.

“And I’m on my toes about seeing America and touring around and everything, but I’m just shit with learning how to deal with all the publicity. Plus I get homesick like every second day, but that’s my problem, yeah? It has nothing to do with any of you.”

“Well, it kind of is my problem if I have to look at you this miserable at one am.”

“How’s that?”

Harry feels his frown deepen as he places his hand right next to Zayn’s with their thumbs osculating.

“Because I care about you?”

“Yeah, but you don’t have to take care of me?”

“Why?”

“Why _would_ you?”

“Because we’re gonna be on our own a lot now, isn’t that what we’re supposed to do?”

Zayn smiles a little stiff and a little foolish at the same time and the vibe it gives makes Harry feel like he’s a child talking to an adult who pretends they know about life more than you will ever do. And it annoys him so verily, like it does every kid in this kind of position ever.

“You’re sweet,” Zayn whispers in the same manner and Harry feels his jaw tightening from the irritation. It really is obnoxious how one person can be so fragile inside and still pretend that they’re made of steal.

“Thanks,” Harry snorts and shifts on the further side of the chair.

“What, are you mad now?”

“Not mad, Zayn. I truly enjoy you being wide awake at this time of the night pretending to be the lonely hero whilst in the real life you’re lost. Like totally lost.”

“I’m not-“

“It’s okay, I know you love the mind games.”

Zayn’s smile disappears the same time Harry’s ironically made one rises.

“ _That_ has nothing to do with how I feel right now.”

“Right,” Harry arches an eyebrow and watches Zayn’s jaw grazing in fast forward, “and I know you’re not good with words in front of cameras, but I guess it’s hard for you either way? To actually _tell_ me how you feel?”

“You were asleep – ”

“You know what I mean,” Harry rolls his eyes. “Any other time? You would never come to me.”

“Why are you saying this right now?”

“Because I can’t read you always, Zayn?” Harry holds his hands up in the air. “And I’m trying, I’m always fucking trying, but I can’t divine what’s inside of you every single day, okay?”

Harry is breathing a little heavily and he’s sure his whisper has turned into a something way too loud for someone who has a house full of sleeping people including Liam’s family a few feet from him. But the growing bruise of his starts to burn a again, the one where Zayn sort of lets him in, but still manages to hold a glass wall behind his back in case he suddenly grows a need to rather avoid Harry’s presence.

“I can’t do this,” Zayn mumbles, gingerly. “Not now.”

Harry feels his chest weltering, but if the panic in Zayn’s eyes had a pretty pale glance before then now it’s reshaped in a frantic fear and Harry knows he has to step back. Or Zayn will shut himself down anyway.

“Yeah, I know,” Harry sighs and stands up, feeling how his flesh starts to burn from what the frigid air has done to it.

“It’s just the way I am,” Zayn says, looking away. “I wish I wouldn’t.”

Harry shakes his head.

“Don’t wish anything for me,” he replies with one feet inside of the house. “Wish for yourself.”

\--

Harry goes straight back to bed and the irritation along with disappointment gets blurred with strong fatigue faster than he thought it would happen. He lays down at the sofa that he was offered to since his back starts to occasionally down the tools and hurt quite sorely from the time they have to spend in busses and plains these days. So, it’s only about ten seconds since he’s closed his eyes when he hears a distant sound of Zayn’s voice calling his name.

“Harry?” it’s the third time when Harry pushes one eye open.

“Sorry,” Zayn looks shameful when he tries to smolder the sound of closing the door behind him. “I know you were asleep.”

Harry tries to pick up his head, but it seems physically impossible being this tired.

“I just want to get some sleep, but I think I won’t manage. Not on my own.”

Zayn’s tone that is noticeably approaching the verge of tears is enough for Harry to split both of his eyes wide open and push himself up on elbows.

“I can sleep on the ground, but if you could maybe let me…you know. We could share the sofa?” Zayn bites down on his lip so energetically that it might as well start to bleed like that. “Weird, I know,” he snorts with his body getting tense, “I’m just lonely tonight. I guess.”

Harry has kind of lost an ability to talk and he’s not sure if it’s because he honestly thinks he’s already half asleep or is it because Zayn is actually saying those things out loud.

“Shit, I’m so bad at this,” he hides his face behind palms and Harry feels an instant wish to hug him.

“No,” he manages to stutter at last. “I mean, yeah, you are, but. C’mere.”

Zayn comes closer with small steps as if still considering the thing he’s about to do so he sleeks the sleeping bag closer to his chest and clenches fingers around it tightly. Then, when Harry’s shifted to the furthest side of the sofa on maximum and they both eye down the tiny space there’s left for Zayn it’s a doubtful moment of silence.

“Maybe I shouldn’t,” Zayn whispers, voice a little shaky.

“ _Zayn_.”

“Alright,” he nods and finally sits down on the edge of the mattress, “okay.”

He slowly lies down, like very, very slowly. Picks up his legs and places both of his hands under his cheek and Harry can feel each and every of their body parts touching like this. Their feet and thighs and shoulders, all of it. It’s so narrow that Harry’s nose is practically pushed against Zayn’s spatula and he has no other choice than to throw an arm around his side and pull him even closer so he’s sure there’s no chance of him falling out of the bed or have any leftovers of feeling lonely.

“Better?” Harry asks when he can feel Zayn’s heartbeats slowing down through his back.

Zayn just nods and puts his hand above Harry’s that’s thrown over his shoulder. He then cautiously starts to draw small lines across his palm and it almost knocks Harry down. The small touches. The delicacy and complete unite feeling of them lying like this and becoming a one. And Harry knows it then that this is how Zayn shows how he feels, this is how he talks. Afraid of things being said out loud and just put out there because they become real then. And he knows that Zayn still thinks this might be too much for him. To have a life in limelight and deal with the nastiest most hurtful comments thrown at him every single day. Comments he didn’t deserve to hear or read ever.

The sleep almost fades away from the satisfaction of Harry receiving his answers like this. Zayn proves him that he trusts Harry with every inch of his heart and that he knows there’s certain things only Harry can give him. Like, sense of safety and brighter ending to dreary thoughts.

“Harry?” Zayn whispers and Harry is sure he can hear him holding his breath.

“Yeah?”

“I think I’m gonna turn around now.”

Harry’s heart stops, it genuinely stops working then. Zayn doesn’t wait for an answer and shifts his body clumsily, trying to turn around and not to fall over the edge of the sofa whilst they’re tangled under both Harry’s blanket and Zayn’s sleeping bag.

“What are you doing?” Harry breaths out and it seems impossible that they’re this close right now yet their mouths are not touching.

Zayn settles down and licks his lips verily. “Taking your advice,” he says and smiles loosely. “Wishing something for myself.”

Harry can feel about thousands of things in that split second. From excitement to fear and extreme crave for what he’s been waiting for far too long now. Cold feet and burning cheeks and goosebumps and spinning head. He feels it all at the same time, the moment Zayn’s face is less than half an inch away from his, their noses barely touching with the two of them glued together and breathing in each other’s mouths. Then, when Zayn wraps his arm around Harry’s side and pushes his finger on the small of his back, the ball filled with emotion drops.

Zayn leans in a little more and the space between them explodes. Their lips brush against each other and the kiss is so small that it almost doesn’t feel like a kiss, but simply them meeting skin on skin with their mouths. It’s delicate, it’s silent. It’s something completely unknown like a feeling Harry didn’t even know exists in him. His heart keeps missing beats and it seems that as close as they are to each other, he still cannot bring Zayn close enough.

They stop only to breathe in and smile widely, the corners of their mouths mirroring each other’s and Harry can’t recall when the last time he felt so warm inside was. So complete and utterly delighted. There’s no butterflies, because it’s not a foolish, tickling sense. It’s more like standing in the middle of a fireplace watching how everything on you is set on fire, but somehow doesn’t hurt. It only makes Harry wish for more; for never ending kisses and chances to taste every bit of Zayn’s mouth. Explore how he loves it, if he’s a giver or taker in kissing and all the parts of what this skin touching can offer them.

“How did we never try _this_ before?” Zayn whispers with his eyes glowing in the dark.

“Stupid, innit?” Harry replies.

And partly, it turns into a never ending kiss because they’re so close that their lips are still touching even when they have stopped kissing. They fall asleep like that – blurred into one.

And Harry knows it is all worth of this, all the games and anger and Zayn’s fear, it is all worth of this moment. Even when Liam’s mom’s voice wakes him up those couple of hours later and Zayn is already in the other room, wide awake and far away. Their _thing_ is worth every bit of it and Harry already knows he has put so much of his heart out there that there isn’t a single chance to not crave for more. And more.

And more.

\--

Kissing joins their _thing_ package quite quickly. They’re all hidden, silent ones without much explanation of why then or why there, but they keep happening like it’s a natural phenomenon. On late evenings when there’s chance to hide in dark and empty rooms or in slow mornings when they’d barely said good morning to each other, but already be sneaking around at some hotel corner making foolish giggling sounds through the kisses.

The thing is, sneaking like this doesn’t make them feel brave. It makes it about ten times scarier with a chance of random people seeing it nevertheless someone they knew. So the kisses are always small and cautious, not very firm or truly replete and it makes everything another step higher of complicated. Harry would try to slide his hand up and cup the back of Zayn’s neck, but it would only make them both feel stiff and frozen. Sometimes one of them would go a bit deeper like properly slipping their tongue out, but the second one has to silent a moan that escapes their mouth it’s done.

In other words, the kisses are like ten percent of what they could be. It turns into some kind of an addition to a friendly relationship between the two of them which is probably beyond weird. It’s not really that passionate to lead on stuff that would make Harry as terrified as satisfied at the same time, but he knows it could be that way. So, it’s that kissing doesn’t seem to be the light at the end of a tunnel, but more of a traffic sign that keeps signalizing the green light. The problem is, no one else can see them crossing the road.

After all, it’s not that Harry wouldn’t enjoy what he has now. Zayn under his palm in some ways he could have never imagined before. The Zayn he remembers from the X Factor days where he was always the one laughing the loudest about Harry’s lame jokes, but then later that night pretending he’s not even in the room. Harry thinks, okay, Harry _knows_ , he’s cracked the shell. At least a part of it that admits they have this thing and that shows and follows Harry’s feeling of addiction. Zayn’s there as well, with his heart and soul, he’s giving him that bit of himself that no one else has. And it kind of is enough for Harry. It has to be.

\--

Sometimes Harry loves to go further just because of this goddamn piece of tease in his character that he owns and that isn’t easy to be hidden. Quite impossible actually.

And he knows how much Zayn hates when someone’s using his cologne and not because he’d be a niggardly person or something. It’s just, he has this way of thinking that people are mainly recognized after their smells and that it’s what really penetrates inside of someone’s memory about you the fastest and stays there the longest. It’s supposed to be a good one half that matters when you first meet someone, face to face. Once, when he was having one of those surprisingly transparent moments of his mind with the two of them pretending to nap at the back seat of the car, Zayn confessed that he can’t smell an orange and not think of Harry these days because he was always eating them in the audition rooms. So it stuck there, in his memory line ever since.

That’s why, this morning Harry’s not only wearing Zayn’s sweater, but he has also blown two sprays of his cologne. Based on pure need to see Zayn tightening his jaw directly at him and maybe, wishing for a fire to start somewhere in his head. That one which would finally lead down a kiss where Harry’s hair would be destroyed by him until there’s not an arranged curl on his head anymore. Because, Harry’s thinking about it a lot, lately. On his free time, on his sleep. Why can’t they afford to have a kiss that they deserve?

Harry walks around the table just to make sure he walks past Zayn twice and finally sits down at the improvised breakfast table that’s arranged at Paul’s hotel room. It’s actually kind of nice that they don’t go to the official hotel breakfasts anymore since they had to take photos with someone every other minute. Harry weirdly enjoys the moments where there are about ten to fifteen people - all trying to fit into the same room and doing a thousand things at the same time. It’s a nice buzz, fully energizing.

“So, you’re up,” Harry says when he’s sat down next to Zayn who is present indeed, but his eyes and hair kind of scream we’re still asleep. “Thought you chose to skip breakfasts last week?”

Zayn looks at him, slowly. He puts down the fuming cup of coffee and breaths out heavily. “And I thought I specifically asked no one to use my perfume?”

Harry smiles with only one side of his mouth. He didn’t hope it would work this fast.

“Ugh, and I thought what’s that smell,” Niall says from the other side of the table with his nose scrunched and mouth full on both cheeks.

“What’s that _smell_?” Zayn echoes in a groan and Louis snorts from where he’s sat at the edge of the bed, his eyes locked on his phone screen.

Niall starts to chew unnaturally fast and tries to ignore Zayn’s gaze.

“It’s not my fault that you haven’t learned to appreciate Gucci.”

“I can appreciate Gucci, when it smells good,” Zayn adds.

“It smells great.”

“Like old caramels?”

“Oh, yes. The expert of good smells – Niall Horan,” Zayn licks the back of his teeth and Harry’s learned enough to know how much he wants to say something nasty right now.

“Man, you’re just weird with this thing,” Niall shrugs it off the way only Niall can do it. The way even if you were ever mad at him, suddenly it just vanishes from your mind because of how cool and innocent he’s acting towards you.

“Well, if _somebody_ would at least listen to what I’m asking for them to do. Politely. Several times,” Zayn returns his stare back at Harry with eyes squeezed in thin lines.

“Yeah man, not cool,” Niall says, pointing at Harry and Zayn with his fork, “what is it about the two of you lately anyway?”

Harry’s wicked grin drops down probably a thousand times too fast and he throws a quick glance at Zayn who switches his annoyed graze into something nonchalant so shockingly smoothly.

“What do you mean?” Harry clears his voice.

“I actually second that,” Louis adds, not picking his eyes up from his phone screen. “You’re so weird these days.”

No, not Louis. Please, _not Louis_. Harry’s already horrible at lying, but with Louis recognizing everything about him from black to white it’s gonna be a road to hell to hide any emotion. It’s just always been that way ever since he met Louis on the show and even later when they shared a flat. The root of them being the closest between the five, seemingly was built on how quick and well they learned to read each other. How for some reason they just had the connection of a long-time friendship, the one where people can communicate without words.

“No one’s weird,” Zayn says it first this time.

“Yeah, you are. I feel like I’m being left out of something,” Niall pouts at it.

“Of what?” Zayn asks.

“I don’t know, but it’s … are you on debt or something?”

“Or something,” Zayn mumbles the way only Harry can hear him and his heart instantly calms in relief when Louis’ phone rings and he walks further in the corner of the room.

“Think you wouldn’t be interested in this one,” Harry winks at Niall, almost naturally.

“Don’t you wink away this from me, Styles,” he actually starts to sound serious on it, “you said it too, Liam? They act strange, yeah?”

Liam does this genuinely painful expression, worse than the one he has during Louis’ teasing marathons.

“Don’t drag me in there,” he says already sliding with his chair backwards to get up. “But yeah. I said that.”

“See?”

“We’re not weird,” Zayn repeats.

Niall just stares down at them both, squeezing his eyes and eventually it causes a truthful laugh in Harry.

“You really are the cute one,” Harry says and it visibly creates a new wave of irritation in him.

“Yeah, well didn’t know we have double of mysterious ones now,” Niall raises his eyebrows as he follows Liam then, leaving the two of them alone.

It’s not a silence around them, it’s actually a proper noise now with Louis still talking on his phone and Liam and Niall discussing stuff with a few people from their crew, but still. It felt like they’re suddenly in a dark room, completely alone.

“Sorry,” Harry says, silently, “about the cologne.”

Zayn simply shakes his head with his face in stone.

“Hey,” Harry whispers, leaning on his side a little. “We’re gonna figure out how to explain them everything, yeah?”

Zayn widens his eyes at Harry in real confusion like he had just been slapped or something.

“We’re not _figuring out_ anything. It’s over,” he chops the words in the darkest passive aggressive manner it is possible. “Whatever it is, even.”

Harry tries to swallow or blink. Or to do anything, actually, but Zayn’s tone completely throws him off the road.

 _Whatever it is, even_.

“What?”

“What, _what_? Enough with the fun and games, yeah? We can’t hide that shit anymore.”

“That shit?!”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah that you’re being a complete ass right now?”

“I’m fucking realistic, Harry. We were fooling around and now it’s done before it’s gone to tragedy.”

Harry finally manages to blink and with that one single movement Zayn is not sitting next to him anymore, out of his sight.

“Can we start with me, Lou?” there’s a distant reflection of his voice and Harry starts to hear ringing in his ears that overcomes any other sound.

Why does it feel like Zayn just punched him straight in his guts? He’s true anyway, it only causes trouble, doesn’t it. So many unanswered questions that daily jabs Harry with their notability.

Starting with the part where Harry isn’t sure at which point in his life he’s supposed feel fully okay with the fact that he’s making out with a guy or is it about Zayn and only Zayn? It’s really hard to tell when the only thing Harry could think about when he was wallowing through the memories of those stolen kisses were how smooth and full Zayn’s bottom lip felt against the dimple under his mouth. Not that he’s a bloke or that it’s something Harry has never imagined to enjoy or crave for in his entire life, yet here he was. At which point was it ever okay to go that far? To play each other out so eagerly until it was down to kissing in the dark.

And at what point, the _thing_ turned into what Harry dreams about every second night and is making him feel so utterly delusional about anything else around, but the tight space between him and Zayn? How embarrassing. How goddamn unreasonable to have this blank emptiness in his lungs right now.

“Harry?” Louis’ voice and a light pat on his knee finally breaks the sharp ringing. “Shower time?”

Harry nods and automatically jumps on his feet, forgetting about any plan of emotion disguise. So it’s more than obvious that Louis looks at him through a deep concern.

\--

It is so simple to write down those little life mysteries on destiny. And magic and diabolism and faith. Any kind of religion, people trust their hearts so much on it. Expect things to happen their own way. Or not to happen. It’s a common reacton to block your brain in order to ease the pain or shock or yearning so it’s easier to trust on anyone but yourself. To hope for the best and just silently pray for it at night. Because when something truly life changing happens, your mind as well as your heart will refuse to accept it at times so you have no other choice than to pass it on some other reason.

_Oh, that must’ve been destiny._

Things happen, they happen all the time. Even if you run away from them or repeatedly ignore them, they will keep happening. The way you want it or complete opposite, but they will. And Harry knows that there’s no way that the destiny thing will ever let him to forget its existence.

So yeah, it is really hard to resist his own heart that keeps pulling him back to the beginning since all he’s ever done is believed that it’s just a finger of some higher power doing all of it. It strikes him, strikes him in real thunderstorm way that it’s his head, his own breathing body and his own soul that asks for that closeness and intimacy. His fingers that end up on Zayn’s skin with what he used to believe was unconscious state, but now is no excuse anymore.

The cosmos and lost soul thing might have brought them together, but it’s not what made Zayn to kiss him back then. To even look at him that way. It’s none of it, but they themselves. It’s Harry who’s always been too hurt and maybe a little too cloak to really finish what they started and it’s Zayn who’s always on the run of his own will.

The thing is though, that they are also the ones who have to live with the constant acceptance of unfulfilled state. Weird, unspeakable blank space at the back of their minds. The thing, the game, the tragedy.

It doesn’t matter how hurtful and pathetic the name of it could make Harry feel. Because nothing beats the ache of the need to moderate his own hands and knees away from Zayn’s body like it’s a crime he’s about to commit. _That_ is what will drive him crazy, not the thought of someone finding out that he has been kissing another guy who just happens to be his best friend as well as his band mate. In fact, the more Harry thought about it, the less it mattered. What matters is that the so high valued freedom of his was slowly and miserably fading away from every aspect in his life. Including the one where he lets his heart to dream about pulling Zayn a little closer than before.

_Just a little more closer…_

***

 

“Okay, my turn,” Harry shuts his eyes and opens his mouth wide open, tongue hanging out.

Zayn hesitates a little and Harry can feel California’s sun burning his mouth and making his throat roughly dry.

“Right…okay, chew,” Zayn places a finger under Harry’s jaw and pushes it up a little.

Harry does as he’s asked and he feels the little bit of bitter and unpleasant taste squash between his teeth and he instantly makes a wry face.

“Oh, no is that the one you love so much?”

“Mhm,” Zayn nods contently.

“The one they always put on deserts?”

“Yep.”

“You know I can never keep their name in my head?”

Zayn smiles the way his nose crinkles to the point where the hazel rings can’t be seen anymore.

“Yeah. You’ve been making me eat them since…”

“Niall’s mom made that desert.”

Zayn smiles even wider, if that’s possible.

“You remember?”

“Of course. I didn’t want to upset her so I’d give you them one by one under the table?”

“Yeah, we thought no one would notice.”

“Did they?”

Zayn eyes Harry with an obvious look.

“What do you think?”

Harry smirks a little and flops on his bum so he can shift his entire body around and lean backwards with his head lied down in Zayn’s lap.

“I think they’ve always seen it. Us and everything.”

“Mm,” Zayn hums and swoops his fingers into Harry’s hair to push them firmly away from his forehead, then stays silent for a couple of minutes.

It’s hot, the air around them, almost too tight to breathe if not for the gentle touches of July’s wind breezes that float around. And it’s dead quiet, them leaning at the back of their tour bus since everyone else is having a nap or doing whatever they do far away from them. Harry kind of doesn’t remember how they ended up like this, just the two of them with a bowl of berries in between, but who needs a reason for it anyway? It’s always been this way, a slick of fingers and they’re there, close enough to hear each other’s heartbeat.

“What are you thinking about?” Harry asks when he’s let Zayn to have this moment of slow exhales, just playing with his curls and drawing circles around his hair line.

“Us,” Zayn says, silently.

“Good thoughts?”

“Complicated ones,” Harry can hear the reflection of a bitter smile in Zayn’s tone.

“It’s simple now, isn’t it though?”

“Is it?”

“What you have to worry about when no one’s around anyway?”

“There’s always something to worry about,” Zayn says and swoops a tip of finger over Harry’s nose.

“That’s your problem, innit,” Harry says opening one of his eyes as the other squeezes a bit tighter, watching Zayn in upside down. “You worry too much. Used to, at least.”

“Did I?”

“Mhm.”

“Is this about me asking for space?”

“More about how you always broke your own settings.”

The silence falls into a dense state and Harry puts a hand above his eyebrows so he could open both of his eyes and watch Zayn biting on his bottom lip, lazily.

“Three weeks. I could stay away from you three weeks,” he snorts in irony and throws his head back a little.

“ _We just have to draw some rules of distance_ ,” Harry sneers Zayn’s words, trying to imitate his accent. “Did you even believe it yourself?”

“Of course I did at the time.”

“Do you still?”

Zayn looks down at him with the softest shade of light caramel and palms Harry’s chin.

“How does it look like to you?”

“Like you’re about to kiss me?”

“Like I’m about to kiss you,” Zayn approves and places his lips against Harry’s.

Not that they hadn’t kissed after they first got asked what’s going on between them repeatedly, because it really took only three lonely weeks for Zayn to climb up into Harry’s tank as soon as they had kicked off the USA leg of tour. All blushed and incredibly kissable he had asked the permission and all Harry could do was to pull him inside of the bed and squeeze his cheeks behind his hands. Then kiss him like they deserved, at last. Slow and tasteful and boldly. Letting his tongue out to twirl around Zayn’s and almost break the kiss with an insane laugh based on how incredibly good that felt. How long-awaited it was and how Harry knew there’s not a single chance that they will ever be able to ignore whatever was going between the two of them.

Of course, next morning Zayn fell into panic and disappeared for the entire day until the show they had at the evening. Then in between the songs, he would whisper shameful, breathless apologies right above Harry’s ear before he’d graze his teeth smoothly at the skin behind his earlobe. In circles and circles, Zayn would reach for the closeness and get terrified right away, probably as much as Harry did each time they fell back together. It’s just that he dealt with it the only way he knew: running away whilst Harry had to stay clueless again and again. Perhaps, he was feeling the same thing Harry did, with the kisses becoming longer and wider until once they had to stop at the point where Zayn’s arms automatically lifted up the second Harry tugged at his shirt. The thing that there are no boundaries left it’s just the rope of fear gradually getting burnt with small bites imprinted in each other’s skin or teasing, wicked strokes pulled between other’s legs. It was the matter of time, nothing else.

“Physalis,” Zayn says, licking his front teeth right after he’s tasted Harry’s mouth. “The berry. It’s called physalis.”

“You know I won’t remember it anyway?”

Zayn grins, defiantly and reaches over Harry’s head to pick out another few out of the bowl, rolling them playfully between his fingers.

“And what if I make you?” he places one of them between his teeth and pulls open Harry’s mouth with his thumb grazing at his bottom lip.

Harry doesn’t manage to turn away before Zayn leans closer and squeezes the berry precisely between their mouths so the entire juice of it drips down on their tongues.

“Physalis,” a kiss on the left side of Harry’s jaw, “physalis,” another one right under his chin, “physalis,” right on top of his lips.

\--

They’re at a club in a city Harry can’t recall the name of, but that’s not what really bothers him. They don’t have a show for the next three days and it’s a nice feeling to let himself go like this except that he’s never been much of a club person with loud music and pulsing temples. He’s far more a fan of old-school bars with the mixed smell of Texas hats and pool tables and dark beer.

Clubs make him feel a bit anxious in a wrong way. He loses a part of his resident dose of confidence and polished communication skills along with it, most of the time spending in loud crowds or behind the bar counter. But tonight, he was actually feeling like he’s in his right spot and he’s not sure if it’s because Zayn has joined them all after a long time or it’s maybe the place itself. Nice, pinkish neon lights that doesn’t water his eyes, no stupid smoke shooting from the ground and the music’s very nice. Dance music, of course, but they’re nice remixed tunes that doesn’t sound like the DJ is on drugs. He was doing perfectly fine, a couple of light cocktails down and swaying between the perfect balance of warm fuzzy feeling and legs that he can still control with no extra attention on them.

But it all changes when Niall grabs Harry’s waist from behind and the next thing he knows he’s sat next to a blonde bird with really nice pair of dark brown eyes which are hard to focus on though cause she’s ensured herself with a pretty flashy decollete as well. Niall is on her other side talking to her friend, probably that looks much more of aware of the situation than the one next to Harry whose practically drooling over him. She’s gorgeous, about three or four years older than him and has one of the most beautiful collar bones he’s ever seen which is such a shame. Because the second she opens her mouth she turns into a plain representation of shallow and dowdyish which apparently Niall never caught into his attention since he just wanted to make sure she wouldn’t interfere himself and her friend.

“Why’d you do this?” Harry elbows Niall just as he sits down and places a row of ten fresh apple pies in front of them.

“What? She’s hot.”

“Yeah she also only cares about how many celeb numbers I have in my phone.”

“Ah,” Niall puckers his lips, “sorry mate. At least stay for the shots?”

And Harry does because of his stupid politeness and then also because he notices Zayn a couple tables away from them talking with one of their security guys, but staring right at Harry. Like not even pretending to try and throw sneaky glances, but glaring at him with such dark anxiety that for a short second Harry’s actually thankful for the vodka dose in front of him.

But then the really nice state where he’s still in control of his legs and arms and every part of his body disappears and he steps over the so called critical point. His hands end up on the girl’s – Linda’s – knees and then in her hair as well and her tasteless jokes start to become somewhat funny or it simply becomes easier to do a fake laughter. Harry doesn’t notice how Niall leaves, but then he’s back with another row out of nowhere and the walls are as blurry as the taste of the blonde’s lips. Somewhere at the back of his head he still feels Zayn staring at him, but it just makes Harry more and more eager to be as close and flirtatious as he can be with her. The little devil growing on his shoulder bigger and stronger and then it’s out of control because Harry makes sure he licks his lips right at Zayn’s direction just seconds before he leans in and whispers into her neck and leaves a kiss behind her ear.

There’s no explanation behind why’s Harry doing all of it. To make Zayn angry or jealous or whatever this can be called, but then again there’s no reason not to do it. They’re always about games anyway.

Then the second Zayn’s out of the seat and out of his sight Harry also loses about ninety percent of interest in any kind of closeness with Linda, but her laughter sounds kind of soothing like a bit of a lullaby so he decides to stay. Also, at this point he’s not sure he can stand up without embarrassing himself. Time loses its meaning and Harry’s not sure if it’s been five minutes or an hour, but he almost reaches the level of drunk where there are no worries at all in this world, just sounds of someone’s voice and him leaning fully into her shoulder. So when he first hears an echo of Zayn’s voice he thinks it’s maybe the next morning already and he’s having one of those half drunk – half hangover dreams.

But he’s not, he is sure of it when he can feel a pinch on his arm which he recognizes as Zayn’s touch even through the massive haziness.

“Sorry,” Zayn says in a dark and charming voice when Harry finally turns at him, “can I borrow him for a second?” he nods at Harry to Linda.

She instantly rolls her shoulders to make the cleavage clear and noticeable and eyes Zayn up and down, the way he’s leaned over the table the four of them are sitting behind.

“You’re in the band too?”

Zayn grins and Harry can feel his cheeks burning even harder than they did before.

“Yeah, I am,” he answers, still swelling a look at Harry, “it won’t take long, promise.”

Harry’s focus vanishes even more because either he’s way too gone or Zayn actually looks like one of those vampires from movies who hasn’t had their monthly dose of blood yet. Thirsty and wicked, his sleeve inks glowing in the neon lights and the black Henley shirt tight around his wide shoulders. It’s fucking ridiculous and also Harry’s already half hard just from the look in his eyes.

“Sure,” she answers, twirling a strand of her hair.

“Thanks, babe,” Zayn says and steps away from the table.

“But you own me another drink now,” she says louder so Zayn can still hear.

He looks at Zayn who’s practically shining from the treat of the situation and how Harry’s clearly still sat next to her because he’s soaked himself.

“No problem,” he says and nods at Harry then, “I’ll wait at the VIP smoking area.”

He turns around and whispers something to the body guard who pats his back and returns to his seat just as Zayn disappears in the crowd.

“I hope you’re back before me,” Linda kisses the corner of Harry’s mouth and stands up, jiggling her way to the bathroom. It’s also the first time Harry notices the purple leather boots she’s wearing that reach over her knee and it makes him laugh in his full voice for some reason.

But then when he automatically looks at the place Zayn was sitting before and stumbles upon the body guard’s stare he gets a punch in his stomach that reminds him that he has to get his shit together. At least to find the door to the smoking area.

It’s harder than he thought it would be, to make sure his feet go in somewhat straight lines, but he’s also thankful that his insides are acting stronger than ever and not signalizing about any need to throw up or even gag from the disturbing taste Harry can feel in his mouth. But he thinks he’s doing well (as a drunk person probably would) as he asks the bartender about the smoking area and making his way through the dancing, loose bodies with sharp elbows and jumping feet all around him.

Those are about three seconds when he slams open the door and the damp ocean’s smell hits his nose and he recalls they’re in Miami. Then, before he gets to breathe out his entire body is being banged against the wall like a gummy bear with two hands grabbing him by his shirt. The shock of it had made Harry shot his eyes close but when he opens them he literally chokes from the look of Zayn’s hazel ones burning only inches away from him with a cigarette hanging down the corner of his mouth. And he’s still grinning the same exact way, hungry and totally mad.

“I never knew why’d they make these VIP smoking areas until now,” Zayn growls when he’s removed the smoke out of his mouth, “but they really are handful aren’t they.”

Harry can’t see straight like not even when he squeezes his eyes, but he still looks around in panic to make sure there’s no one else around them.

“Don’t worry, it’s just us,” Zayn whispers leaning closer so his full body is pressing Harry against the wall now. “You enjoying your time in there?”

“And how did it look like?”

Zayn laughs, sonorous and deep. “It looked like you’ve pissed your face and settled in for cheap hands.”

“Just because you’re settled in for forever, doesn’t mean I can’t have a little bit of fun.”

“What makes you think I won’t have fun tonight?”

Maybe it’s still the apple pie’s taste on the tip of his tongue, but Harry’s pretty sure he can scent a good amount of whiskey and lemon into Zayn’s breath between smoke and peppermint _Dirol_.

“You’re shitfaced as well!” Harry spurs in a lightsome relief. “You’re eyes go like this,” he rolls his eyes so he’s looking at his nose, “and you smell like a barrel of whiskey, ha!”

Zayn smiles at him, a bit of a softer at his silliness, but then slides his hand from where it was still gripped into his shirt down to reach for his wrist.

“I’ve had a few,” he pulls his arm up at the wall and places it behind Harry’s head, then pushes on it heavily, “just because I had to watch your little show.”

“My little show? Is that how my flirting skills are called now?”

“More like your _drinking-two-rows-of-vodka-and-still-managing-to-find-her-mouth_ skills.”

“You sound annoyed mister Malik,” Harry lowers his voice and uses his free hand to scratch the bottom of Zayn’s chin, “jealous maybe?”

“Jealous?” Zayn snorts and leans an inch closer so their lips share the same air now, “what should I feel jealous about?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Harry rolls his tongue over Zayn’s bottom lip to collect the surpluses of whiskey’s bitter taste, “I know a couple of things you’re wishing I’d do to you.”

Harry’s eyes drop down a little to see how Zayn swallows hardly with saliva travelling down his throat, slow and heavy. Then, he licks his lips biting down on where Harry had just swooped his tongue over and throws the smoke over his shoulder.

“You think you could do me good, Styles? Good enough?”

Harry pouts at him, all offended. “I may be more about short skirts, but believe me, I’d still know how to use my mouth on you.”

“You didn’t look much about short skirts in there,” Zayn presses a thumb against Harry’s collar bone and starts to slowly slide it down over his chest.

“What else?”

“Licking your mouth at me each time you go and kiss her,” he’s down to Harry’s lower stomach and Harry can feel every bit of nerve of his body collecting at the place Zayn has his finger on. “That’s a new game, yeah?”

“That’s what you get for staring at me like that all night.”

“Oh - ,” Zayn nods and scrapes his fingernail over Harry’s hip bone so tenderly that his legs shake from it. “That’s what I _got_ for it?”

It feels like a sluice is about to break through some gates or something exploding, Harry knows it. But he still can’t control a bone in his body that’s so loose yet so tense at the same time, splashed against the wall. And Zayn’s mouth still closer than it was allowed with the smell of alcohol spinning his head like it wasn’t a struggle to keep his eyes open already.

“Well, I think I owe you a move then,” Zayn whispers, looping his thumb behind Harry’s belt.

And then, before Harry can blink, before he can prepare himself for it Zayn pushes his full hand past Harry’s belt down in his boxers and Harry slams his head in full strength at the wall backwards. That being followed with an immediate load moan passing through his mouth from the sudden amount of pleasure. And Harry doesn’t know what’s worse, to hear Zayn laughing in satisfaction or to feel that he’s stone hard from the first two touches Zayn does.

He doesn’t even stroke him properly just does some rushed and messy squeezes, but it’s all it takes for Harry to lose his shit entirely. Pink skies and golden stars way. Like he’s about to come in Zayn’s palm right here at the back of the club just from the position they are with Zayn cornering him like a quarry upon the wall, the dry skin of his fingers circling around Harry’s cock in fierce touches. Like it would be totally okay to just nut in his hand this fast, giving into the dizziness and tension and the fucking relish that’s floating in every inch of his blood.

“How’s this, Harry,” Zayn whispers and Harry thinks his skin is on fire where his breath lands on Harry’s neck. “Call it a checkmate?”

Harry opens his mouth to growl something nasty his brain doesn’t comprehend yet, but then Zayn jumps back so quick that Harry doesn’t manage to draw down his arm that’s still placed above his head. Then, seconds later he can hear the door snapping open and he does a shaky breath, steadying himself away from the wall.

“You said it won’t take long?” Linda’s high voice breaks the air and she comes in with her back first, pulling out a pack of Winston’s from her purse in her way. “They didn’t want to let me in here even, I had to say I’m Harry’s girlfriend.”

“That’s terrible,” Zayn’s back to the same exact dark grinning and smooth voice and Harry couldn’t hate more his ability to switch his expressions this fast, “I’m sorry for the wait darling, he’s all yours.”

Harry’s hands pull into fists and there’s nothing he craves for more than to grip that fist into Zayn’s dumb Henley and slam him against that wall in the exact same way he did it to Harry. Only harder, with all the drunk power that’s left in his limbs.

“And what about my drink?” she calls after Zayn who’s already staggering away, moving at the VIP exit.

“Oh, I’m sure Harry will atone that for me, yeah?”

And then he winks. Light and regardless move. Fucking winks at them both and waves carelessly and Harry promises himself then and there that if this is really another game for them, he’s gonna win it no matter what.

\--

It could be an early morning when Harry staggers through the hotel lobbies with a pathetic wish that no one’s gonna notice him until he finally finds himself at the men’s room, staring through a blur at his phone. He has no clue which room Zayn’s staying at and he’s called him an embarrassingly many times, with no success as none of them he has bothered to pick up the phone. That can only mean he’s either asleep or already having another company and either way, Harry should stop right here and now, he knows it with the last of his sense that isn’t gone drunk, but still.

How is he supposed to stop _now_?

Zayn has started a new page, once again. Blatantly pushed his hand down Harry’s pants, stroking him like that the bastard. As weird, unnatural and completely fucked up their relationship may be, Harry knows that what happened that hour or so ago only meant one thing. And surprisingly enough, Harry never imagined Zayn being the first one to give out an invite for it, but then again, has Harry ever been first to do anything in between them? Or he’s just the one who’s always obediently reaching after whatever straw Zayn’s offering him even though he’s had ideas about it for ages. But this time, the way Zayn’s fingers wrapped around Harry’s cock with such brutal anxiety, this seemed like one hell of a burning straw.

“I’m fucked,” Harry mumbles to himself as he whimpers through the cabin’s door and leans at the back wall of it.

And he really is. He said nothing to any of the security guys after he had followed Linda back inside, bought her a drink and promised to be back after a quick phone call. But just as Zayn never answered, the quick phone call turned into a Harry stumbling through the dark down the backyard’s exit all alone. Then, when he had walked out in the street lights that hit his brain like a sharp coin, he caught the first cab he noticed. And now he’s back at the hotel, confused and breathless, reading all the furious incoming messages until he finally catches a breath to type properly.

Harry’s drunk, like heavy eyelids and numb tongue drunk, but there’s always this one well known moment when you look at yourself in the mirror and even if you’re completely wasted, you’ll have a brief second of _what-the-hell-are-you-_ doing look aimed at your own eyes. It only lasts as long as you’re watching yourself, alone and jiggling from leg to leg, but it does occur. For a second.

Harry has that second with a good amount of embarrassment in it, how irresponsible he’s been, risking with paps noticing him drunk out there. How he lets his heart do whatever it wants without considering it with his head whenever it comes to Zayn and himself.

So just as he’s finished sending a couple of messages telling everyone he’s fine and safe and back at the hotel that took him nearly ten minutes to do with the dizzy sight he’s struggling with, he feels walls around him slowly colliding back with floor again. Responsibility kicking at the bottom of his guts, Harry almost forgets all the craziness that has born in his brain, all the illusions and the still-kind-of throbbing dick that yearns for Zayn’s touch so much that it hurts. The way its length is pressed upon his jeans so tight. Almost.

But then it’s too much of an obvious sign, Harry thinks, when Liam rushes into the men’s room with glassy eyes widening at Harry in white panic the same time Harry’s look locks on Liam’s pocket’s that are overfull with those small bottles from room’s mini-bar. But Harry doesn’t care to ask about it, as soon as he remembers that Liam always writes down all five of their hotel room numbers down in his phone ‘just in case’. Harry silently takes back all the swallowed smirks he’s had about it.

When Harry walks out back into the lobby, he tries not to run or look that glaring, but it’s a tad impossible with his legs rushing on their own and fighting the pigeon feet reflex in their way. He also tries not to sweat that much or hide gasps as soon as he steps out of the lift and already sees the gold numbering of Zayn’s room, but he cannot. He _cannot_ hide a single flame being this dizzy and this anxious about something he wants so insanely much.

Harry hasn’t really had that wide of an experience with dealing this lately. This – as if wanting something so hard that his skin tickles from it or not being able to control his own muscles when his legs run on their own. Actually, Harry can’t think of an earlier time he was wishing for something so eagerly than when they were on X Factor. His audition day, the judges houses, then all the live shows. Because, truthfully, after that everything did become real, all of his dreams falling into his pocket one by one like fished out stars. And ever since, the only star still shining in the sky playing hide and seek has been Zayn.

He swipes his damp palms against his thighs before takes the last long inhale and prepares himself for something, he’s not even sure of what it is. He can’t be sure that Zayn’s in his own room or that he’s really not asleep already, knowing he was even worse than Harry with the amount of alcohol in his blood a short moment ago. Maybe he has a girl in there, beautifully splashed out under the duvet and drinking champagne that Zayn loved to order for girls they used to pull together, just for pure showing off.

All the possibilities sweep through his head, but Harry can’t wrap his head around it enough to care about anything anymore. He leans heavily at the door jamb and knocks twice, making sure it’s loud enough even if Zayn’s passed out at the edge of the bed.

But he’s not. He definitely wasn’t asleep. More like waiting?

Zayn opens the door shortly after the second knock, changed into his gray _Adidas_ sweats and a loose tank top that uncovers lots of inked, delicious skin that’s practically screaming to be bitten at, Harry thinks. And a dumb, satisfied grin. He’s wearing one of those as well. But it doesn’t seem like he’s had a shower, his hair still arranged into some sort of a quiff reflection so it means he’s still drunk enough as well.

“You alone?” Harry asks and hears how raw his voice sounds.

“Yeah.”

“Good,” Harry says and pushes himself through the door. He looks around twice as a reflex to make sure no one else is in the room and only notices the clothes Zayn was wearing earlier scattered on the floor and his laptop wide open, also on the floor next to an ashtray and a couple of empty mini-bottles.

“Partying on your own?” Harry asks when walking over to the fridge.

“Might as well. How’s the purple boots doing?” Zayn asks a matter-of-factly.

“Do you really care?”

“Nah, not really. Thought you did?”

Harry snorts, and takes out the last mini-Jameson there’s left.

“Yeah, yeah. That’s exactly why I’m here, because I cared so much about the shallowest chick at the club.”

“Okay. So why are you here?”

“Why wouldn’t you answer your phone?” Harry answers with a question.

Zayn blinks at him and starts to look around the room, chaotically, then checks the pockets of his jeans he had left on the floor. It takes him a genuine couple of seconds to come down with an answer.

“Shit, I passed out at the car. Must’ve slipped out of my pocket or something,” Zayn says it with zero sarcasm and as soon as Harry realizes he’s telling truth he breaks into a laugh.

“Right.”

“What, were you looking for me?”

Harry swallows a half bottle in one try and shivers from the strong scent of it burning down his lungs.

“Yeah,” he says, removing shoes between steps and approaching Zayn. “Was looking for you.”

Maybe, Harry’s still too drunk and maybe, he looks like a gawky animal with curled feather, but it must be what Zayn wants right now and earlier at the club. Perhaps, exactly what he wants, because his eyes do that vampire thing again. Ignite like actually go on fire, watching Harry coming closer to him, slowly and full wicked dimples settling in his cheeks.

“Thought you’re more about short skirts,” Zayn sizzles when Harry’s placed both of his feet to frame Zayn’s, an index looped around the edge of his sweats.

“I think,” Harry does a half smile and pulls Zayn closer by the hold on the sweats so they’re crotch to crotch, tightly, “tonight I’m more about you.”

Zayn’s baggy sweats make it impossible for Harry to actually feel him so instead, he makes sure that Zayn feels _him_. Hard and panting and pulsing, from the single thought of Zayn’s touch and the look in his eyes that’s as hungry as Harry’s entire body.

“Tell me, Zayn,” Harry shifts even closer so his lips are pressed at Zayn’s neck, “tell me how much you want this.”

He can hear Zayn blowing air through his nose and feel his thighs tightening like he’s about to squat down on his knees.

“Tell me what you want. Tell me _how_ you want it. Just tell me,” Harry groans with hot air splashing against Zayn’s neck vein, “tell me.”

“I want – “, his voice gets stuck and Harry’s sure he can feel a flip of cock even through the spacy _Adidas_. “I want you to count to three.”

“Count me to three?”

“Yeah.”

Harry returns facing Zayn and he’s also grinning now, his jaw keener than ever.

“What’s after three?”

“Don’t you know what they say, Harry,” he presses his lips right against the corner of Harry’s mouth and slowly slides them across his cheek up to his ear, “count to three and lose control?”

The second Zayn’s words melt into Harry’s senses and he tries not to lose his breath completely, he pushes a knee between Harry’s legs, rubbing it against his inner thighs - slow and crucial.

“One,” Zayn whispers the number upon Harry’s ear, moving a strand of curl away from it with his nose and unzips his jeans at the same time, “two,” there’s a muffled roar leaving Harry’s throat and Zayn covers his mouth with his free hand to make him silent. “Three,” Zayn pushes a hand down in Harry’s boxers the second time this evening, but this time moves his fingers with such lazy-tease glance that when he removes his hand from Harry’s mouth it’s impossible to detain a full voice groan.

 _Lose control_.

That is exactly what it leads to. Somewhere, at the back of his mind, Harry wishes he could go slow for this, to taste every second and scratch every cell of Zayn’s skin he sees, but there’s just no way his body would let him to do it now, after all the wait he’s had. So he thrusts his hands into Zayn’s hair and pulls it with all the anxiety that had accumulated into his blood which is like. _A lot_.

Zayn leashes a silent cry when Harry pulls him away from his neck and just spends this last split second taking a full look at his features and smirks in complete dark happiness when sees the lust practically piling upon his eyes.

“You could’ve told me earlier, you know,” Harry says leaning in to leave a line of half sucked bites down to Zayn’s jaw line still holding him by his hair, “how much you wanted this.”

“That - ,” Zayn tries to swallow since Harry’s leaving actual bruises all over his third day scruff now, “that wouldn’t be the same though.”

“Yeah? How’s that?”

“Watching you slammed across that wall out there completely terrified by me,” Zayn pushes out words beneath his teeth, “that was worth of so much more.”

“So you planned it?”

“Sure,” Zayn snorts in a way that it still matches more of a cry sound.

“Well, how’d you know that I’d come to you otherwise?” Harry asks, unstrapping the rub of his sweats.

“I didn’t.”

“So you just touched my dick like that for no reason?”

“No, I touched your dick because I’ve wanted to hear you moan like that for ages,” Zayn smirks at it and that’s about enough for Harry.

He parrots Zayn’s earlier move and slides his hand down in his pants, finding a hot air there filled with nude and it’s more than profitable that Zayn’s not wearing any boxers anymore. The free way to his cock is too inviting to be resisted so Harry wraps a hand on it – mist already – to stroke him the same placid manner he did before. And it works.

Oh God, it works perfectly since Zayn can’t close his mouth anymore. Harry thinks this is one of the best things he’s seen in his entire life.

“You know that this is only gonna get more fucked up from now on right?” Harry tilts his head so he can lick the warm dimple that connects Zayn’s collar bone to his neck.

“Yeah,” Zayn lifts his arms in the air and lets Harry to remove his shirt like that, “but I also know how much I want you.”

His eyes drop down on Harry’s lips and licks his own so desirously that Harry actually feels a twitch between his thighs.

“Don’t you?” Zayn looks up at him then and for a relatively tiny second there’s a genuine concern in his eyes.

“Oh my God,” Harry shakes his head and pulls Zayn in a deep kiss, making sure his tongue does a full circle into his mouth. “You have no idea,” he says when he has to break it and catch a breath.

No one in this entire world has an idea how satisfying it feels to leave a kiss down on those inked lips on Zayn’s chest when Harry has spent more nights than he can count right next to him as well as far away dreaming about this chance. To bent his knees and move lower to lick the skin on his defined pecs down to his abs and just enjoy the look of muscles tightening under the touch of his tongue. He also uses the chance to roll his tongue over Zayn’s nipple just as he’s imagined to tease him this way ever since they started the stupid joke in the band where they’d rub each other’s nipples with no reasonable explanation.

His brain doesn’t even comprehend what is happening, Harry’s sure of it, but his body wants it all and wants it all in fast forward and dull incoming. He only stops when his mouth reaches Zayn’s hip bone and the heart tattoo begging to be bitten there so Harry lets himself to do it and he didn’t think that it would cause that reaction from Zayn, but this might be his new favorite feeling in the world.

Zayn’s hands swooped into his hair in a manner that’s demanding, but a little helpless at the same time, holding on to the back of his head and trying to steady himself from the shiver in his legs. And Harry realizes it then, how teasing it must be, him going down with his mouth leaving prints everywhere, until he’s finally reached down. How it feels when his lips are inches away from Zayn’s dick, with his teeth tickling the skin right next to it.

But as much as Harry feeds from chances to tease Zayn this way, he can’t hold it in any longer and he’s pretty sure Zayn couldn’t either, feeling the grip he has on Harry’s neck. So he pulls his sweats just above his knees so Zayn can stretch his legs a little and then without another breath, throws himself in. Wraps his mouth around his cock and it’s thick, so fucking thick in his mouth throbbing like this. Harry doesn’t even touch it with his hands at first just moves up and down, slowly, testing how much he can take of him. Harry feels the head slightly brushing his throat the same time he hears Zayn muffling a groan on his own.

He looks up at him and there isn’t much of a bigger turn on possible than the look of Zayn’s head practically hanging backwards, his neck muscles refusing to work anymore and eyes closed upon his parted mouth. Harry has never been on his knees for anyone, nevertheless sucked anyone off and he suddenly feels like he’s been missing on his years or more precisely, missing on the time he’s known Zayn.

“Fuck,” he spits it out, “fuck, Harry, this is like – “

He doesn’t finish, but breaks into another moan as Harry adds a hand that strokes him in the same rhythm as his mouth slides up and down and with each time he can feel Zayn’s fingers grabbing at Harry’s neck and hair a little harder.

There is no surprise that Harry feels coming himself after the first few times his tongue circles around Zayn’s dick vein, recalling, again, how much he’s dreamed about this and how this is just like cutting a bag open filled with fantasies he’s thought of to work himself up so many times. So it’s also not a surprise when his knees start to tremble foully from the electrifying pinches everywhere. Then, almost naturally his fingertips imprint into the back of Zayn’s thigh to be sure he doesn’t lose his balance.

“This is like – ,” Zayn tries once more, with his thumb massaging Harry’s clavicle, “amazing, you’re fucking amazing, Harry.”

It’s maybe a little too much because this is the first time ever when Harry feels like he could come without even touching himself. It’s Zayn’s face fucked up in the motion of pleasure and it’s his hands pushed up into Harry’s hair with fingers swooping the back of his neck. Harry having a sight up to Zayn’s naked body, his shoulders almost glowing in the dark all tightened from the way he holds on to him. And yeah, his mouthful of Zayn’s cock. That as well.

Zayn keeps repeating several _fucks_ up to the way how Harry moves his mouth faster and his tongue scissors around his dick more frantically, until he starts to shake the way Harry knows he’s very near the edge. It’s ridiculous and a bit upsetting how he’s only done a couple of strokes and like a small bit of all the tricks he can do with his tongue and Zayn’s as gone as himself.

He doesn’t even record that he’s touching himself, but he is, doing uneasy and frantic strokes with his free hand and then the spinning lights go out completely. The last thing Harry remembers is swooping the tip of his tongue from Zayn’s balls down to the head for around two times before Zayn practically yells Harry’s name out. It’s all a blur then when he stumbles backwards, trying not to come all over Harry’s face as a reflex, but he doesn’t get much further away since Harry falls on top of his free hand the second he can’t steady himself with holding onto Zayn’s thigh. So, he feels a few warm splashes spilling down on his nose which is exactly enough for him to do about three heedless strokes on himself and come in his hand less than second later.

Harry falls lower on his forearms with a moment of complete darkness. Absolute blank space where he isn’t Harry and Zayn isn’t Zayn and he’s just there on his four with no strength in his bones left. Then gradually, he waits for gasps to calm down a little and the exploded fireworks to ebb from his brain. His body loose and brash as he slowly crawls up to the chair and sits on the ground, leaning at the edge of it.

“And I thought kissing you is like the best thing ever,” Zayn pants, ironically, falling backwards in the opposite chair.

“Yeah,” Harry slides a thumb over his nose, trying to clean it up a little, “said I’d knew how to use my mouth on you.”

Zayn snorts before they fall into silence filled with the last of quieting gasps and immense question marks spinning in the air. None of them know what are they supposed to do now, how to act or is it even possible to walk out of this room and ever be the same with each other after this. And Harry knows that Zayn, being the continuous hide&seek-er between the two of them, can’t do any of it now. To run away or hide on his own because it would only drive him insane, not being able to be with the one person that’s as responsible for this as he is himself. The only one who understands.

“We could order more alcohol up here. Like, lots of it,” Zayn suggests in a monotone voice, staring down at his own shoes.

“I’ve already had enough for tonight, I think.”

“Yeah? Even for this?”

Harry frowns at him.

“What, do you wanna get rid of the memory of me sucking you off in a bottle of tequila now?”

“I think that’s kind of impossible,” Zayn’s eyes narrow a little when they meet his sweats pulled down to his knees. “And I don’t want to forget it?”

“What else you need alcohol for then?”

Zayn stares at him, a little helpless. “Courage.”

“Courage?” Harry’s frown deepens within repeating it.

“Do you think I could ever pull you out there like that being sober?” Zayn shakes head at himself. “I’m terrified after every single time we kiss, you know that. But then I wake up the next morning and I want to do it all over again. Sometimes, in the middle of a night or an interview or a show.”

Harry straightens himself up, feeling how his consciousness slowly flies back to his brain with each confession he’s hearing.

“I _need_ an extra pluck for this,” Zayn’s voice lowers like telling a secret, “it’s just that it confuses me that much, get it? You know I’m no good with words. I rather push my hand down your boxers after seven whiskeys than tell how crazy I am about you.”

Harry blinks at him, slowly.“You kind of just did.”

Zayn softens, his mouth pulling a pale smile.

“Yeah. I guess I did.”

“But I am too. Crazy about you,” Harry says, additionally.

“Good,” Zayn smiles a little wider and leisurely stands up walking across the room to reach for the hotel room phone.

“So you need courage for what? Slamming me against a wall again? I’d be ready this time, you know.”

“Well,” Zayn sighs wickedly, “a little resistance might come right in time.”

\--

Harry walks in right behind Zayn and looks around twice, even though the room is completely dark.

“Doors?” Zayn points at it.

“Right,” Harry turns back to turn the key and lock them in.

The room is small, smaller than any of those they have stayed in recently. Not too much furniture around besides the bed, two wooden cupboards and a velvet armchair tucked into the corner of it. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but the walls might be pigeon blue with a quite an unattractive ornament, barely matching the floral gray curtains. It even seems old school that it has an actual key for it not the electrified locking system with chipped cards. But it feels nice, the bit of shaggy vibe and motel resemblance. Kind of adequate for sneaking around. For hiding.

“So whose is it? The room.”

“Louis’,” Zayn says and steps out of his shoes, leaning at the back of the wall. “Does it matter?”

“No, just checking.”

“Said he’s staying in the bus tonight. The room is ours.”

Harry nods and waits for his eyes to get used to the dark fully so he can scan Zayn up and down. He feels his skin heating up and head going in slow circle as if he was slightly drunk or something. Mad impatience and lust overload, it’s that feeling he comes back to so often lately.

It’s safe to say that the bag is entirely open between the two of them, more like thrown inside out. Everything possible has been put on the table, all the repeated blow jobs at the back of the arenas and the breathless fucks against some bathroom’s door wall; been there done that. The one thing Harry considers as a bigger problem than the actual fact of what is happening between them two is – the anxiety only grows.

This tour has brought anything but piece for them, like they’re on fire for most of the time. Ever since they kicked off the first few shows it has gradually swelled up, all the intensity and bold moves. Any kind of shyness or sense of guilt has been thrown in the trash and it’s just plain reality. They crave for each other like early teenagers, uncontrollable and reckless. On stage or off, it’s all over the place, but of course, the game is far more dangerous and far more exciting when it’s about being in public. Even during their shows the boundaries become blurred and limits stretch out to unknown. Ruthless teasing in whispers and sucked bruises and candy thongs, and dances that resemble thrusts and suck offs. They wouldn’t back off for anything and as much as it scares them both and as many weird looks everyone gift them each time they cross the lines, it’s unstoppable. At least for now.

Besides, when they’re on a tour, it feels like nothing is truly real or permanent. Like when you travel to another country to party hard just because no one knows you there. You have no yesterday or no tomorrow, just that one night of fun. It’s a blink, from city to city and so there was this false pretext that none of it is wrong. None of hiding in the hotel rooms or lying to practically everyone or developing some deeper feelings with each time one of them comes with the other one’s yelled name on their lips. None of it can be considered as a crime once they wake up in a different city the next day.

The most intense, most agitation causing one is usually the after show feeling. When they’re already in this state of ecstasy, as if being on light drugs maybe, in the most harmless way possible. With a lasting sense of excitement and electrified energy, it seems that it gives that extra reason to reach for a proper explosion. To feed the stored vitality what was accumulated during singing in front of thousands of people and satisfy the hided lust, always in them somewhere. In other words, Harry and Zayn may consider shows and everything that follows until they get to be alone as a foreplay. Sometimes a role play as well since they only get to be themselves with each other is when they’re like this. Far away from anyone else’s eyes and ears.

They’ve just had one of the biggest shows on this tour and Harry still hears the little bit of ringing in his ears from all the screams, a flattering thing that becomes incredibly disturbing though. The ends of his hair still a little wet from the rushed shower he took right before they drove off the arena in a current haste. And somewhere, behind the agitation and fingernails that itch to scrape a big fat _‘I LOVE HARRY <3’_ on Zayn’s ass cheek, Harry knows that he’s on the verge of collapsing from the exhaust in his bones. But it’s like this second breath he receives each time he gets to have Zayn for himself. One last explosion.

Zayn takes off his red plaid that leaves him in a white tank top and Harry’s eyes are sufficiently used to the dark so he can see him clearly. Wide and square shoulders and all the inks that almost blur into one and those goddamn collar bones. Sharp with tight skin around them, provoking to be endlessly touched.

“You have that look again,” Zayn nods at Harry’s face.

“What look?”

“Don’t know, but you like. Fuck me with your eyes or something.”

Harry smirks and before Zayn gets to blink he’s already half running towards him. “B.i.n.g.o,” he spells the name right above Zayn’s mouth.

“Ouch,” Zayn growls under Harry’s breath, his entire body pressed against the wall with Harry’s hands thrust on both sides of his shoulders.

“Too many clothes,” Harry shakes his head in dissatisfaction and pulls the tank top as far as he can since Zayn doesn’t help him and keeps his arms down by his sides. “Would you?”

“’m not sure,” Zayn scraps his jaw teasingly, the way Harry can hear nail scratching against the stubbly skin. “You look dangerous, Styles.”

“Don’t tell me you don’t like dangerous,” Harry leans deeper to lick a slow line from Zayn’s earlobe to his collar bone. “Because I know you do.”

“Really?” Zayn says in that thick, raw voice that notably highlights his accent and grabs Harry by his ass.

“Yeah,” Harry removes his hands from Zayn’s shoulders down to his thighs, “and you better hold on down there real tight.”

Zayn frowns just shortly, but his slight distraction is exactly what Harry needs when he picks him up by his thighs, then instantly wraps arms around Zayn’s waist. It’s one of the nicest advantages really, to be that much bigger than Zayn so he can lift him up so effortlessly.  

“New move?” Zayn asks, grinning.

“New way to shut you up.”

“What makes you think I – “

Harry slams Zayn’s back into the wall again, warily, but hard enough to make him moan and shove his hands into Harry’s hair.

“Does dangerous have to hurt this much?” Zayn asks, tightening his legs around Harry’s waist and locking feet against his tail bone.

“You tell me.”

“Auuh,” Zayn makes another tearful sound with his lower lip trapped between Harry’s teeth. He pulls on it, as far as he can then chews sharply.

It’s easy now when Zayn is holding on to him even if it’s his hair and his legs all tied up on him so Harry backs away from the wall. Just a couple of steps to properly feel the weight of Zayn in his arms and kisses him.

They kiss like it’s maybe their last night or something, always when they’re on their way to finish themselves and each other, just a couple of touches away from fucking. Deep and ardent with powerful tongue twirls in between. Zayn constantly wreathes his fingers through Harry’s curls and pulls on them occasionally, to adjust his mouth in the angle he wants to. They don’t take time to breathe away from each other so in matter of seconds they’re both gasping with weltering chests like they’ve been running stairs.

Harry walks blindly until his heels meet the edge of the bed and he turns around. Finally eyes Zayn and his look tells the same Harry feels, how he’s burning inside. Zayn’s hands drop down to Harry’s shoulders and squeeze them, just a little which Harry reads as the green light and lays him down. Slow and heedful and even when they’re both down, Zayn doesn’t loose his legs away from Harry’s waist so he’s pressed on top of him.

“Why does it always feel like forever until we get to do this,” Zayn huffs and cups the back of Harry’s neck, pulls him closer.

“I don’t know,” Harry says, tugging on Zayn’s shirt impatiently and he gives in this time, lifts his arms up so Harry undresses him. “But it drives me crazy, I think.”

“You _think_?” Zayn asks with a skew smile.

“Shut up.”

Harry lightly snaps Zayn’s bare chest and dives into kissing his torso. It’s like an instant reaction once he has him shirtless, to bite on the sides of his shoulders and lick all the lines of inks that gets in his way. His lips meet Zayn’s skin in short, cut touches and it’s hard to tell if it’s his mouth that’s on fire or perhaps it’s Zayn himself.

“You’re hot,” Harry mumbles with his cheek pressed at Zayn’s heart tattoo.

“Thanks.”

Harry rolls eyes on that, but it feels overly misplaced when he looks up at Zayn who’s eyeing him as well. Mouth way puffer than its usual and eyes all round and glowing yellow like a southern sunset sun, he looks untouchable. With his outlined body, the skin so tight around his bones and a face so unnaturally dark and defiant. Harry knows this is the hottest thing he’s seen ever, maybe.

“I meant your body, you’re burning.”

“Well, that’s probably all you.”

“All me?”

“Your mouth, to be precise.”

Harry grins and pouts eagerly so his lips widen enough to leave a wet and ticklish feeling across Zayn’s V-line. “I have a good one, don’t I?” he finishes when his teeth reach the line of his jeans.

“A dirty one,” Zayn straightens up just enough so he can reach Harry’s mouth and roll over a thumb on it which Harry bites on, immediately. Sucks on it just shortly when he notices Zayn glaring at him so needy that it kicks him right down in his pants. Once Harry lets go of his finger, Zayn shoves his hands down on his hips.

“Get it off you,” he runs his fingers up from Harry’s hips to his chest under his shirt and Harry does as he’s said, pulls of the shirt. “Those too,” Zayn unclenches his legs so they drop down against Harry’s thighs and rubs a nail behind the button of his jeans.

Harry grunts just as he sees Zayn biting on his bottom lip with a stare locked on his nipples, all outspoken and wild. “Who fucks with their eyes now?” Harry nods at him.

He loves seeing Zayn this thirsty, in fact, nothing ignites him more than the look on his eyes when he wants to tear Harry apart. He doesn’t get to see him like that in any other part of the day, ever really, this dark and this horny. No one gets to see him like this, nevertheless to feel the look aimed at them. And if they do, Harry forgets about it, erases from his memory because right now, right here Zayn is all his. Owns him like a glorious puppet and Zayn has him the same. A constant game of who’s better at teasing and who’ll do their next move smarter. A quicker touch or deeper kiss just to distract the other and have him pantless and throbbing without any warning. Eager and incredibly desirous, they’re a total mess that’s based on winning over the other with much pleasure in between. A bit of a sex chess or something.

He slides Zayn’s bottoms off, both his jeans and briefs and strokes an airy hand over his cock like he isn’t already more than rock hard himself. Harry peeks at Zayn and watches him shut his eyes and clench his jaw at the same time, watches his neck lines popping up with blood as he tightens his grip.

“Giving up already?” Harry asks.

Zayn shakes his head and swallows to make a sound. “Just want your mouth, Harry.”

“That sounds like your next tatt,” Harry slides an index from Zayn’s balls to the very inside of his thigh. “Would look good right here.”

“Fuck off.”

“Will see about that.”

Harry pulls Zayn a little lover by his legs and licks his base just a little, just one last touch that’s small and full of tease before he’s too eager himself. Puts Zayn’s dick in his mouth with flat tongue and goes down as far as he can, his nose barely touching Zayn’s skin. He loves to go that far that fast, no warning just watching how Zayn has to imprint his fingers into the sheets and jerk his hips up. And just as he does, Harry would usually press his palm against his belly button to keep him down and still, but he uses it differently this time. Just as Zayn lifts his hips from the mattress Harry presses a finger against his hole, not too deep just enough to make him feel both at the same time. His mouth, big and warm around his cock and a finger filling him down under. Zayn chokes with air – actually chokes – and shoots up his entire upper body with a gasped _shit_.

“I'd rather fuck _you_ ,” Harry murmurs in such raw voice that it seems to be coming from someone else. “I think that’s tonight.”

He works his mouth a little faster now, but not that deep anymore to make sure Zayn has some chances to hold on a little longer. Just goes down half way and then back up to roll a lip over the tip, enveloping the head with his mouth. Harry loves to go prompt, and not too sloppy, just the right weapon for some powerful teasing.

Zayn moans under his touch – load and low – his voice sounds so clear that it almost shutters Harry’s intentions down. He’s heard him doing it now some good dozens of times, but it hits him each time on its own, how each of Harry’s touches provokes a new wave of pleasure for Zayn. One he has to get vocal about, totally carless and caught in the moment, it gives Harry the highest level of satisfaction.

Harry pulls off with a _pop_ when Zayn’s in the middle of his half-yelled _fuckHarryfuck’s_ and smiles at him, like it’s his favorite thing to do, watch him lose his shit entirely. Slowly, gradually explode with Harry’s mouth working him up and down from kissing his thighs to laving the vein under his cock and do a full suck on his balls, all in one breath.

“Can’t anymore,” Zayn stutters and Harry looks up at him, his eyes fixed and heated on him. “Fuck it, don’t make me beg, Harry.”

Harry would love to protest on this, he’d _adore_ to tease Zayn until he actually gets furious and is ready to throw him against the nearest flat surface or even better. Fuck him so hard that it’d feel like he’s being shaken to another universe or something, his ass torn in parts. And perhaps it would work some other time, on a slow and candle lit evening maybe, not like they’d get to have those, but either way. A leisurely foreplay with much determination to tease and experiment with others limits, Harry could survive on that one, he likes to think. But no fucking way can he listen to Zayn begging for something only Harry can give him with his pupils blown black from anxiety and stay dry in his pants tonight. During their after show blues in this motel-y kind of a room that looks like a prototype for desperate shagging.

Harry smirks devilishly, just to make sure Zayn knows he still wants to fuck him not the other way around and nods. “Right,” he jumps off the bed and walks out of his jeans, clumsy as always when he’s this anxious, “no begging.”

He pulls out the bottle of lube from his back pocket and throws the jeans away, then cups his own dick through the fabric of his briefs, just rubs at the tightness of it. “You wouldn’t last either, would you,” Zayn grins at his bulge.

“Can’t handle your endless moans ‘s all.”

Zayn grazes his jaw in a way that it’s so familiar to Harry that it almost amuses him at this point. He even laughs a little, but a short one right before he’s settled back on the bed between Zayn’s legs. Pushes them wider and snaps open the lube with his thumb, slicks his fingers in it carelessly.

“Ready, yeah?” Harry asks with two slick fingers already pressed against Zayn’s entrance and he bites his lip for an answer.

Harry knows Zayn’s always tight at first, but it doesn’t stop giving him nice shivers at how tight exactly it feels around his fingers. That’s why he pushes the first one only through the knuckle once before he adds the other already. Slow, getting through the ring muscle and then further with a sharp push, the way Zayn automatically tries to jerk his hips backwards. Harry reacts faster than he knew he could, throwing an arm around Zayn’s lower waist and steadying him, more like pulling closer. So he doesn’t get to recoil away, just feels Harry entering him deeper, as deep as he can before Zayn stops his hand, clenching fingers around his wrist. Harry gets the point and pulls out a little, then twists and twirls his fingers to watch Zayn triumphant, shuddering through his touch with face going from medium satisfied to fired up completely, head hanging on one side powerless.

“Want me in, babe?” Harry taunts and all Zayn can do is make a pale nod, which isn’t anywhere near as assure yes as his hips that shoot up, begging desperately to take Harry all in, hard and deep. His dick even jerks against his stomach all glistening from the great amount of pre-come.

“Good,” Harry carefully pulls off his fingers and wipes them in the sheets before tries to shuffle back, but Zayn catches him by his ankles.

“’m not gonna turn around,” he grunts and Harry arches an eyebrow at him. “Wanna see your face while you’re in me. Wanna see you fucking me.”

He looks a little mad, but maybe more than a little. Harry thinks he might fall in love with Zayn more and more each time he looks at him like this caged animal, nuzzling the smell of jungle. “You sure?” Harry reassures as incredibly eager as he is already.

“Don’t tell me you don’t want to see me moaning.”

Harry doesn’t have to answer that, really. So he positions himself back between Zayn’s thighs, slides as close as he can and thrusts hips ahead just to be at somewhat right angle. None of them have done this before, face to face, but Harry’s pretty sure he’s not anywhere near to call himself ready for it, to watch Zayn up and close, all his expressions of pleasure and loaded bliss.

“Is this,” Zayn gasps and enlaces his legs around Harry, “is this good?”

“Yeah just – ,” Harry murmurs and hooks Zayn’s knees a little higher up on his waist, “it’s good now, just like this.”

“Fuuuuck,” Zayn sobs, his voice wheezy just as Harry enters him, slower than he’s done it in a long time.

It’s slightly odd and uncomfortable for less than seconds and once Harry’s inside of him deep enough, he thinks he’s going to burst in parts just like that. One single push without any strength in it and the fireworks are there, caused by this angle and Zayn’s front body only inches away. He pulls of quicker than he pushed in, but doesn’t take the head of his cock out, just lingers with the tip of it still inside. It’s instantly some kind of a messed up addiction, the feeling of him so thick inside of Zayn who’s tighter than ever, noticeably unused to this position.

“Tell me,” Harry nudges his fingers against Zayn’s thighs, “can I like, ‘s it okay if I go faster?”

Zayn stretches his arms backwards and leans on his elbows, splashes his legs even wider. He makes it easier for Harry to enter this way and somewhat prepares himself for the bit of pain he’s gonna get through for these next couple of times.

“Go on, yeah.”

Harry nods and thrusts in a little harder, watches Zayn squeeze his eyes shut and his mouth dropping low, licking over the chopped parts of his lips. “So good, you feel so good like this,” Harry hums, hips hitching deeper with each move.

Zayn picks up his head and looks at Harry under heavy-lidded eyes, mouth shadowing a wicked grin. “Say again,” he gasps.

“So good,” Harry pleases him instantly, because he feels it around his waist, how Zayn’s legs loose a bit, how he gets less tense around him. “Feels so good inside of you like this.”

Zayn smiles at him blissfully, like he’s slowly awaking from a dark dream, straightens up so their chests are close again. He instantaneously goes for Harry’s nipple, rubs a finger on it and Harry feels it perky and hard between Zayn’s touch, a little soar as he pushes on it hardly. Harry looks at him provokingly and Zayn reads his desire like an opened book.

“You’re so big this way,” Zayn says and Harry’s eyes widen on it, unconsciously. He wished for a nice and low moan, an _mm so good_ sound or something, but Zayn’s face goes even darker. “So thick babes, feels fucking great.”

Harry makes an unintelligible sound, some letters that doesn’t make any sense and jerks his hips uncontrollably.

“It gets you off so fast, doesn’t it,” Zayn does a huffed laugh and moves his fingers up to scratch a nail over his jaw line, “’s nice, this tight and full.”

“ _Zayn_ ,” Harry groans his name and thrusts so hard that Zayn’s entire body shuffles on one side, him losing his balance.

“God, Harry,” Zayn snorts, but angles himself back and grips a hand into Harry’s shoulder this time.

It makes him burn in his cheeks so hard, a plain embarrassment, that Harry wants to destroy Zayn’s grin with a flip of coin, quick and sharp. He fumbles a hand around Zayn’s cock and strokes him as slow as he thrusts, a synchronized move that causes just the right amount of shock in Zayn’s face.

“Think you can win me on this, _babes_?” Harry grits out.

He thrusts again and again, deeper with each time and wanks him heedlessly, tightening the grip around it back and forward. It works on Zayn like a lit match, filling Harry up with devilish pride, just as he shakes under his touch, each body part starting to tremble and crest up to an explosion.

“Don’t stop, it feels so good, you don’t even – “ Zayn begs for it, eyes completely frenetic, “go harder, just like that yeah.”

It’s as insanely amazing as Harry imagined it and worse. To feel himself inside of Zayn tighter than ever, the way how his cock feels dense and enclosed by skin and watch him quivering fractious. His golden olive skin glows covered in cold sweat and Harry can’t push himself to watch his face anymore, because it’s simply too much and he can’t fucking lose this. Zayn’s parted mouth and his eyes rolling up and down, piles of sweat caught in his lashes even.

Harry shuts his eyes on it and he enjoys the feeling of Zayn being so close just through touch. Zayn’s one hand still gripped deep into the bone of his shoulder and the other travelling aimlessly up and down Harry’s body. His hand flat on his chest for a second then wonders up to his face and cups his cheek, slaps it lightly.

“I’m – ,” Harry hears Zayn’s strangled voice, but it vanishes between the rest of it. The sounds of their wet flash splashing at each other, Zayn’s legs rocking around his waist and his cheeks redder than they’ve ever been. It feels so much to take in that Harry thinks he’s maybe gonna black out or something, almost hurts to hold himself back and then finally. _Finally_ , Zayn gives up.

Harry feels him freeze like he’s under a spell or something and he gets a foggy glimpse of Zayn’s face caught up in the orgasm, eyes slam shot. Harry whimpers on the reaction with his hips high up in the sky from those previous intense thrusts and there’s the usual split second that’s like the last moment of somewhat clear state. The one where he thinks he should pull out of Zayn and come on his belly button, fill it up and make him watch. Because Harry knows how Zayn enjoys the view of Harry coming, that’s why he’s always been better with holding on just a little longer. To watch how he loves to call it _\- trophy for my dick –_ face, twisted in parts of pain and pleasure.

But he doesn’t manage to, not in time. He makes the last roll of his hips and comes right inside of Zayn, them shaking in unison now. “Fuck,” Harry mumbles and watches Zayn falling backwards in the sheets, legs spreading down. “ _Fuck_ , Zayn,” he repeats and his head falls down, the wet strands of hair sticking to his ears and cheeks.

“I know,” Zayn breathes and Harry nearly blacks out.

He doesn’t move until his heartbeats stop echoing in his ears and then pulls out of Zayn, his dick still raw and red. Once he’s crawled over the side of the bed Harry looks at Zayn, his chest still weltering heavily and face calming down like his features lend into their right places. Eyes go back to their soft yellow shade and mouth lines in a straight position, Harry sees it instantly, how exhausted he is.

“Think,” Harry starts off and reaches for Zayn’s face, pats his cheek lightly, “we should call this even.”

Zayn snorts, lazily, “guess so,” then gives in the touch of Harry’s palm and kisses it.

That’s what Harry hates the most, how bloody tired they both are always once they’re disentangled the anxiety from themselves. The day seems endless each time they lay down like this, even when they’re just hanging around in the bus tunk, all together, but the fatigue is inevitable. Because Harry would much appreciate cuddling for hours and having midnight talks with fuming tees and maybe, if lucky enough, to witness a sunset, cheek pressed to Zayn’s chest.

But it’s impossible to keep his eyes open for more than these couple of seconds he uses to watch Zayn smiling at him with lids falling down. The picture changes into black darkness and the last thing he feels is Zayn’s hand on his neck.

\--

Harry doesn’t have to open his eyes to feel that the warmth of Zayn’s body is still here. Which comes as a surprise, since this happens so rarely. Both of them waking up at the same time with no rush or half-finished sentences. So he rolls on to his back and pushes himself to open his eyes even though they squeeze together as soon as the sharp edges of the light hit them.

What comes as a bigger surprise is that Zayn is up, not still half asleep up with a drowsy smile hooked upon his lips, but wide awake up. Laying on his side with chin placed in his palm and looking at Harry like a gorgeous fine art statuette. Like he’s spent the entire night like this.

“Was I snoring?” it’s the first excuse that comes to Harry’s mind.

“Na-ah”, Zayn smiles so softly, looking as a sunbeam himself, glowing skin and caramel eyes.

“What else then?”

“Nothing. Day dreaming ‘s all.”

Harry scrunches one of his eyebrows and Zayn immediately pushes a finger on his lid to prevent it. “Good morning,” he kisses the word upon Harry’s dimple.

“’morning,” Harry hums and shifts closer so he can pin his right side to Zayn’s entirely. “You’re up early?”

“Yeah,” Zayn answers and Harry feels him lightly putting his chin on top of Harry’s head that fits perfectly into the warm space between Zayn’s collar bone and his neck. “Missed you.”

“While asleep?”

“While dreaming. You weren’t there.”

Harry stops playing with Zayn’s nipple under the blanket to look up to him. “I’m here now.”

“I know,” Zayn whispers, thoughtfully.

“Is everything okay?”

“Of course,” Zayn does a light tickle above Harry’s neck and he feels like a kitten falling for his touch like this.

“What were you day dreaming about then?”

Zayn stops the tickling to put his full hand on Harry’s chest. “You. And what you have done to me, Styles.”

Harry grins about it as much as Zayn sounds dead serious. “I’ve heard it’s my charm.”

“Really? I think it might be magic.”

“You think I have a spell on you or something?”

“Or something,” Zayn mouths, leaning in to do a small bite on Harry’s earlobe. A leisure, warm one that makes Harry wonder how slow Zayn acts with him this morning.

“Not late for anything are you?”

Zayn’s body shoots up immediately. “Am I?”

Harry laughs, for a second he forgot how big of a chance for someone like Zayn it is to actually forget about stuff that’s planned for him.

“No. I mean, I’m not informed. You’re just always…you know. In a rush.”

“’m not always,” Zayn denies, sweeping his arm under the blanket and wrapping it cautiously around Harry’s waist.

Harry turns at him, doing an obvious stare that declares the truth.

“Alright, well sometimes I am,” Zayn admits, nudging his nose against Harry’s hair and breathing in it, “I’m not right now, though.”

“Stay,” Harry says it without much thought in it, more like a habit, “just stay, please. For a while.”

“’m not going anywhere.”

“You’re _always_ going somewhere.”

“No, Harry. Not always.”

“Yeah. Just when it becomes real, then you do.”

Zayn’s body goes rigid so fast for such loose state Harry’s limbs are still in.

“Why do you always have to do this,” he says, even his voice stiff now.

“Do what?”

“Destroy them. The good moments to accuse me on something, why do you always do that?”

“I don’t do it on purpose? It’s just that’s how it’s always been, the good never lasts.”

“Because you wouldn’t let it last.”

“ _I_ wouldn’t let it last?” Harry sits up which makes Zayn already move closer to the edge of the bed.

“I need coffee.”

“You wanna leave.”

“No, Harry, I need coffee. Then talk.”

“But you’re not gonna stay? For the whole day here, are you?”

Zayn ignores the question as he does, slipping out of the bed and it’s ridiculous how quick the sheets become cold once he’s out.

“Zayn.”

“I’m not leaving alright? Just need coffee.”

“Come back in bed, please.”

Zayn stops for a second when he’s thrown on himself Harry’s white t-shirt and slipped into his own jeans. It’s unfair that he looks outrageously beautiful just like that, with the morning’s negligence and a huge mop of the dark hair falling down by his forehead.

“I need a smoke, okay? And coffee. Then I’ll be back, promise.”

“You need to get away from me, don’t you.”

“Harry I - ,” Zayn throws his back a little to breathe in properly. “It just gets old, you know. Feeling guilty about something.”

“I don’t want you to feel guilty,” Harry says and shifts himself out of the bed as well. “I mean, sometimes I do, but only when I’m really angry. Or drunk maybe.”

“Are you angry or drunk right now?”

“No, it just slipped out, alright? It’s just always been the worst thing, to wake up alone.”

“I know,” the corners of Zayn’s mouth drop down entirely.

“Look, I know I do this thing, but I still don’t want you to regret anything?”

“How can I not regret anything when you keep sounding so upset all the time?”

“Because that’s how we are, we’re –,“ Harry starts, but the sentence stays up in the air.

“Exactly. Because we’re what Harry? Apart from complicated and hurt?”

“Is that really all what you get from us? Complicated and hurt?!”

“No, it’s not what I meant,” Zayn sighs disjointedly and then softens a little when sees Harry just staring at him in silent panic, rubbing fingers at the sides of his bare legs.

“I just can’t,” Zayn pauses to take another breath, “I _hate_ hurting you.”

Harry steps a little closer, trying to relax his features since he can’t stand watching Zayn’s shoulders so heavy so early in the morning, when everything is supposed to be bright and easy.

“Why do you constantly feel the need to protect me, Zayn? Do you still think I’m the baby of the group or something?”

“It’s not that I think you can’t protect yourself.”

“Then what else?”

Zayn eyes him with such struggle like he can’t put his thoughts in order. “Your problem, Harry, is that you don’t realize how good you are. How fucking amazing person you are and that you don’t deserve half of the shit I’ve given to you. You deserve none of it, actually,” he puts a hand on his chest, unconsciously.

“I’m not a child Zayn, I can put up with the shit anyone gives me.”

“I know you can. It doesn’t mean you deserve it?”

“Okay then what? Is it only now that you realized it? Not each time you left before I woke up? Not once you’d choose someone else over me?”

The thing slips out before Harry can stop himself and he regrets it immediately. Just as watching Zayn’s cheek bones almost crashing as his entire face falls done.

“Shit, I didn’t want to bring that up.”

“No, it’s okay. And I know it hurts – ,” Zayn stops himself in mid sentence like he’s just realized some big riddle and shakes head on it. “Actually no, I don’t know. I have no idea how you’ve felt. Or ever listened to you closely enough, I guess,” Zayn looks at him with a drilling regret and stays silent until whispers a blatant _sorry._

“I know –”

“No, Harry,” he interrupts and it’s him that comes closer this time, making it possible to reach for a touch. “I’m sorry I’ve never treated you properly. I forget that you’re so much better than this and that you deserve better. I shouldn’t forget that.”

“Would you stop apologizing for living your life the way you want it? I don’t want you to feel like you own me something.”

“It’s not how I want it? Not like this, when I make you unhappy.”

Harry puts a hand on Zayn’s shoulder and grips on it real tight because it looks like he’s maybe about to collapse from the heaviness they’re holding up. Zayn looks down at the hand as soon as Harry’s fingers imprint in the fabric of the shirt like a life line to hold on to.

“Don’t ever say that again.”

“It’s just that you’re _it_ ,” Zayn continues like he never heard Harry. “Your heart. And your presence and your talent? You’re it, Harry.”

“I think you’ve gone all wrong now,” Harry smiles about it, but Zayn doesn’t flinch at all.

“And to think that you would want me the way you do, I just don’t understand?” Zayn looks   him in the eyes and he has a genuine question mark upon his face. “I’m just ruining you, aren’t I?”

“Alright, shut up and listen real careful now,” Harry moves his hand up from Zayn’s shoulder to the beck of his neck and squeezes the skin there as hard as it reaches the point it could hurt him. “You’re not ruining anything, understand? Never, you can’t ruin anything, there’s just not an option like that especially when it comes to me. And if I wanted to, I could’ve finished this long time ago, couldn’t I?”

“You should have.”

“I _could_ have. Never did.”

“But don’t you want to be happy? Like forever happy?”

“Of course I do,” Harry smiles again. “And you know what makes me really happy?”

Zayn shakes his head and Harry leans in to kiss him for an answer. “You. You make me really happy and what we have.”

They fall into silence, with Harry’s hands around Zayn’s neck and his painfully stiff posture slowly fading away. He looks at Harry with a glance that is impossible to read and it’s been a while since it has happened. Since there’s something completely unfamiliar and untouched in him again, the way it was when Harry first started to get to know Zayn. An unknown piece of glass Harry instantly wants to break, owning another part of his mind as well of his heart.

But the look disappears quickly, the deep and figuring stare vanishes and his shoulders ease as he grabs Harry by his hand and leads both of them back to the bed.

“Do you think someone’s laughing about us right now?” Zayn asks and he has his familiar, soothing tone back.

“What do you mean?”

“Like, whoever is responsible for _this_. And us.”

“Simon Cowell?”

Zayn laughs, loud and beautiful, pulling Harry into his lap.

“No, I mean someone up there,” he points upwards the sky.

“Hmm,” Harry leans in deeper, placing his head on Zayn’s shoulder and considers it for a short second. “Probably. We’re giving them a great show though, aren’t we?”

Zayn hums a light giggle into Harry’s ear, fondling the skin of his neck. “Yeah. Yeah, we are.”

 

 

***

 

“So, where’s Zayn?” Niall comes from behind and sits down sliding the bench between his legs.

“How would I know?”

There’s a long enough following silence for Harry to pick up his eyes and see Niall staring at him, all outspoken.

“Because you do? Like usually?”

“I don’t _usually_ know where Zayn’s at. Like most of the people.”

There’s another obvious glare and then Niall shifts closer, putting his elbows on the table where Harry’s scribbling some stuff in his journal.

“Yeah, you do. Are you still mad at him?”

Harry rolls eyes, putting the green pencil down and reaching for a red one.

“I’m not mad at him, how many times I have to repeat that.”

“Until you stop lying?”

“’m not lying.”

“Look,” Niall leans over the table and pulls out the pencil from Harry’s fingers, “you do realize I can see through you, right?”

Harry glares at him and crosses his arms, silently wishing if this was maybe Gemma who’d he was talking to. When she just did that annoying thing with pulling out all the right answers from Harry that she wanted to, somehow. But then again, Niall’s soft and blatant enough of approach to deal with any kind of struggle is one of the things that Harry appreciates most about him.

“I’m not mad, okay? It’s his life, I have nothing to be angry about.”

“But you’re annoyed? That he didn’t tell you?”

“Wouldn’t you be?”

Niall bites on his bottom lip and puts down the pencil he was whirling through his fingers.

“Yeah, but you were the only one he didn’t? And I don’t know what that means, but I’m pretty sure that _you_ do.”

“He wasn’t scared. More like craven.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“Look, I swear I’m not angry, we’re just a bit fallen apart, yeah? We’re big boys now, we’ll know how to hide it all out there.”

“I don’t give a shit about _‘out there’_ ,” Niall spits out, “I hate to watch the two of you this miserable.”

Harry starts to draw unconscious infinity signs all over the corners of the journal, but then snaps at the pages as soon as he realizes it’s a complete Zayn thing to do.

“Hey,” Niall leans as close as he’s sure only Harry will hear the rest of it, “I don’t know what is the thing between the two of you, and I guess it’s better for all of us, but. All I know, is that you two have this bond that no one else here has. An impact.”

“I can’t make him change his mind,” Harry whispers under his breath.

“That’s not what I’m saying? You need to stop acting dumb and realize that nothing’s gonna change unless any of you grow up.”

Harry frowns, making Niall grin shortly, but then soon falling back to seriousness.

“Talk. Like adults do.”

“You know how shit Zayn’s with that, right?”

“That’s why I’m sat here with you not him.”

“Well, maybe I’m just tired of being the one who needs to talk first.”

“Oh God,” Niall rolls shoulders and sits back a little, “haven’t you seen him?”

“Who?”

“Zayn, around you? He looks terrified. He’s scared of your reaction, Harry, he’s fucking scared of how you may feel.”

“Craven,” Harry corrects him again, “not scared.”

“Alright, whatever. But that’s how much he cares? Any idiot could see that you matter more to him, can’t _you_ see that?”

“You can’t turn this into an optimistic thing, Niall, not even you.”

Niall breaks into a laugh, naturally and shakes his head at Harry.

“You know, you’ve always been weird together,” Niall says, pointing at him thoughtfully, “but I much more appreciate when you’re weird and happy together. Not this.”

Harry does a mild smile in response and all he can think of is yeah. So does he.

\--

Niall was right, Harry sees it now, when he’s gathered the determination to look at Zayn properly, that he’s scared. Throwing quick and gray looks at Harry like he used to do in the old days, but not softening even a little this time. Not when Harry tries to hold the glare on him for that much longer than it’s natural. To sit closer or linger a hand on his shoulder during an interview for more than once just so the gestures are clear. And that’s when Harry starts to fire up.

It’s one thing to run away from something the two of them had created, from all the kisses and nights where they’ve both been equally responsible for ending up naked and collided, but this is not the case. You can’t just screw up, make someone hurt on purpose and then wait for the person to understand. Moreover, when the other takes a step forward and shows clear need of explanations and maybe, an apology? But mostly, an explanation.

How was that ever fair for Zayn to decide that he wants to propose and never tell Harry, not even afterwards. How was it fair when they shared _everything_ , all the smallest secrets and greatest desires. But most importantly, how was it fair for him to make this unconditional decision, to fall for someone else so deep that it makes Harry split into dust? Turn into a memory without him even knowing, as if he’s always been just a supporting actor, waiting for the main two end up together.

So, at first Harry did want to go back to them being happy together, he really did. But then it just become above painful and insulting when he realized it with days that he’s giving all too much again. Putting so much energy and heart into something that only makes him suffer and feel smaller. And he doesn’t know where he got the strength to even fight that little for Zayn’s heart after everything, but he’s becoming more eager about the chance to make it clear that he won’t do that anymore. At least, he’ll try.

That’s why, it goes down to the acting again. They keep playing, in fact the game has never been this worked as it has before. Harry making jokes about the engagement in interviews and intense, eyes-to mouth-to eyes looks at each other in front of cameras like it’s a complete normal thing to do. They really are big boys now, grown into roles they have to wear and then dropping them down once it’s possible.

Walls grow and the space? First time since they probably shared a bed or something, Harry realizes how wrong the world seems when the space doesn’t disappear between them, gradually. When he blinks once, twice and no. They’re knees still aren’t touching. For the first time, there _was_ space. And if before it killed Harry because he thought that he would never be able to have it ever, not when Zayn was in the same room, then now it killed him because of its existence. Cold and blank.

Turns out magnets can make their own choices at times.

\--

“I’m thinking sailors? Like Pirates of the Caribbean style?”

“Johnny Depp! He loves Depp, what about that? Masquerade or something?” Niall shrinks down lower in his chair.

Louis snaps fingers at him, “that would be cool.”

Liam walks past with one headphone still in his ear. “Come on now, it’s not like they have a date yet.”

Harry looks at him over the book and smiles with his eyes.

Actually, this is the first time Harry looks over the pages ever since they brought up any of the ideas about the bachelor party. He was thinking about leaving the building that exact second, but he’s really trying to not look mad or hurt or disdainful about it anymore. Like _really_ trying. He has to so everyone would stop throwing significant and judging looks at him.

So he just stays silent, pretending to be drown in the lines of his good friend Bukowski whilst in reality he’s still stuck at the same exact paragraph he was ten minutes ago.

“What’s bad about early party planning?” Louis asks, but Liam’s already put the other headphone back in.

Niall looks at Harry with a knowing look which he feels with his forehead since he’s back to staring at the book in his lap. “What about you Styles? Any suggestions?”

For a short second Harry considers the option of ignoring the question, but suddenly there are about five pairs of eyes all drilling at him. He looks up and there they are again, the condemnatory kind of shady looks. All expecting for Harry to either make a joke or sarcastic note or maybe start to cry or something. When Harry opens his mouth it’s like there’s another person talking because he hears himself from above.

“I’m thinking,” Harry clears his voice and closes the book, cautiously, “comics. Make it a journey through the comic world with different theme each hour. Avenger’s hour with superwoman strippers and Captain Britain hour with questionnaires about comic world so he can feel the smartest men in the room. Drinking games on Power Ranger hour at midnight or something. Make Marvel send a cake with Zayn and Perrie’s faces on it dressed as superheroes.”

The room falls into complete silence, at least it feels like that since Harry can hear everyone holding their breath. Niall’s eyes have widened unapologetically and Liam clearly has no music playing through his headphones since he’s also staring, but with more of a painful expression than surprise really.

“Sweet,” Louis says it first trying to clear the tension and it works as people kind of wake up from it, continuing what they did before, “that sounds _really_ cool.”

Harry throws a fake flashing smile and stands up, suddenly feeling like he’s about to be sick, his entire insides warming up and spinning around like being thrown in a washing machine.

“No problem,” he says and walks away, pressing the book against his chest as tight as he can.

He needs air, loads and loads of air.

It’s impossible to comprehend the ugly feeling that Harry’s full body goes through; his legs like two rubbers, weak and pulpy and head way too heavy as if he has no neck at all. Like someone had just done a small cut right above his heart and pushed down a finger in there searching for the most painful spot, then pressed on it and left.

The comic book idea is something Harry was secretly planning for Zayn on his eighteen birthday. Not that he was invited or something, but it was just the way he imagined it if the organization was his responsibility. And he didn’t even realize he was saying it out loud until he did. The idea had stuck in his mind or something and now he reshaped it into a bachelor party theme two years later. The leap jump from memories that go back to them as kids and to now, the idea of Harry holding a birthday party idea inside of him for all this time and putting it on the table as a purpose for Zayn’s celebratory last night as an unmarried man. It’s a tad too much to handle, maybe.

The nauseous state reshapes into anger that he had learned to press down for a short moment, but he can’t anymore. He won’t, why would he even? Why would he sacrifice his freedom and honesty just to protect Zayn’s heart?

Harry doesn’t find air, of course. His legs were going in random directions with no conscious movement and he stumbles upon their dressing room and of fucking course he does. Because maybe Niall was right and Harry always knows where Zayn’s at? If not on purpose or not in his head then in his bones maybe. A bloody curse or something.

\--

Harry snaps the door behind him a little louder than he wanted to, but perhaps it’s right in time as Zayn jumps up, turning around in the desk chair.

“You scared me,” he puts a hand above his chest.

“Did I?”

Harry walks closer with his arms crossed and the more confused Zayn looks about him, the more anxious he feels.

“What is it?” Zayn lowers his voice instantly.

“Why are you hiding here?” Harry looks around, ignoring Zayn’s question.

“I’m not hiding?”

“Yeah?” Harry walks from one side to the other, now locking his hands behind his back.

“Kind of looks like hiding to me.”

“What is up with you?” Zayn furrows brows at him.

“Nothing,” Harry shrugs, “we just haven’t talked in a while.”

“Okay?”

“So,” Harry stops walking then so that the next question is aimed right at Zayn. “How’s the engaged life? Got some presents, yeah?”

Zayn’s eyes widen for a millisecond and then his lips shadow a smile, kind of.

“And I was wondering when would you come at me with this.”

“With what? Just wondering if I maybe should’ve got you something as well. Kinda having troubled sleep because of it. Feeling guilty, you know,” Harry frowns sarcastically.

“Stop,” Zayn says, calmly.

“Well, let me see, what can I get you. A blow job? Or like a morning suck off that you love so much?”

“ _Stop_.”

“No? A proper fuck then? You better pin me down for that one though.”

“Fucking _stop_ , Harry.”

“Why? I’m having fun, aren’t you? Isn’t this all about a great laugh anyway?”

“Enough!” Zayn spits it out and that is the second time Harry hears him this loud from anger in his life. The first one, when it’s directly at him.

“It’s not a joke, alright? And I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it before I did it if that’s why you’re doing this, but I didn’t want to hurt you?”

Harry snorts, his hands slowly starting to shake in rage so he locks them even harder.

“No, it’s not about that. I mean, as much as I enjoyed finding that out overhearing a conversation between Louis and Niall that is not the point.”

“Look, I’m sorry, but it has nothing to do with you anyway.”

The air suffocates Harry’s entire throat and lungs at the same time.

“The _fuck_?”

“What we have, it has nothing to do with my choices towards her and my future life, okay?”

“ _Okay_?!” Harry’s arms unlock and inflate in the air then, “are you bloody kidding me?”

He’s in his full voice now as well and somewhere at the back of his mind he could care about people hearing them, but not with this burning hole in his chest now.

“What we have has nothing to do with your future life? What are we, each other’s gigolos or something?”

“Stop acting like this.”

“No, you stop acting like I’m supposed to swallow this as a morning sandwich, alright? You get fucking engaged, without telling me a single word about it and then expect me to acquiesce that I shouldn’t feel like I’m important enough to be involved in your life decisions?”

“So it is about not telling you in time then.”

“No, it is about you making the dumbest mistake in your life.”

Zayn stands up from the chair the way he maybe wants to punch Harry, but his legs look glued to the place he’s stood up.

“Say that again?”

“Oh God, you heard me.”

“I’d rather you repeat that to my face once more.”

“I’ll tell you in other words,” Harry pushes himself to lower his voice, “only someone who feels as guilty as you could go for a proposal. You still think you can just fix everything with act, don’t you? Instead of once in your lifetime to be honest with yourself and people around you.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Just admit it that that ring is an apology not a future promise, would you?”

“I love her!” Zayn blurs out a breathless gasp, then looks at Harry with that apologetic, awful shade in his eyes. “I’m in love. That’s what people do when they’re in love.”

Harry compresses his lips together, trying to lock the tears of fading anger away from his eyes.

“Alright,” he nods – at last – all silent. “Alright. Then answer me this one thing.”

Zayn’s eyes begin to glow as well, watery from the helpless feeling probably.

“If she’s the true love of your life. The only person you want to kiss and wake up next to for the rest of your life. If that’s all real, who am _I_ to you?”

“Harry,” Zayn shakes his head, shutting his eyes closed.

“No, really. Who am I in this scenario?”

“You know we don’t have answers to any of this? We’ve never had them.”

“Well, how about you start looking for some?” Harry says and he knows his knees are too fragile to watch the tear that’s slowly making its way down Zayn’s cheek to drop down on his neck so he turns around.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Zayn whispers it so quietly that Harry might as well be imagining that.

“How can you keep telling me that and then just do it?”

“Because I don’t know what to do, okay?” Zayn’s voice flat and desperate. “I have no fucking clue what to do.”

They stand in silence with the weirdest space between them that there’s ever been. The half-close half-away state that has always emboldened their skin meet in a blood rushing touch is nothing like before. It’s not pulling this time, even though Harry can feel Zayn shifting closer, it’s like an icicle falling on top of a frozen ground.

“Did you ever even want me? Like _really_ want me?”

“How can you – “

“No, don’t answer that,” Harry hides his face in his hands.

“I _still_ want you,” Zayn reaches for Harry’s elbow, but he manages to back away in time.

Harry knows what this would lead to. Zayn would touch his arm up to his shoulder and neck. Then kiss him, probably. Because that is how bad Zayn is with putting feelings into words and apologies, especially. He kisses them, always kisses the pain away, as if bribing Harry’s heart that way. It hurts a little too much this time for that to happen, though. And for the first time ever Harry feels like he might find an ending to the gravity games, at least a reason to do it. Maybe even learn to say goodbye.

So he leaves instantly. Does the thing Zayn’s practiced through the years and leaves, more like runs out of the room. Out of the building and out of everyone’s concerned eyes which is gonna be another of tomorrow’s problems.

 

 

***

 

Los Angeles won him over the first time he went there and it didn’t feel like a bad influence, but more like a delicious, new experience. A place that gifted him the sweetest taste of freedom, something Harry measured more than anything. This sort of powerful vibe that awakens a desire for bigger dreams. More adrenaline, more passion. More emotion in general. The entire aura of go hard or go home, it had made clear to Harry that this is going to be a place he will want to remember and want to come back to. And he did, as often as he could because it seemed that it becomes more and more irresistible. Addicting maybe – the place itself, red Cadillacs and black shining bikes that Harry didn’t linger to try out himself. And people. People there who knew the perfect balance between glamour and humility, Harry had soon found the same language with so many new personalities – families even – that it seemed almost stunning to be able to feel so _right_ so far away from the place he spent his entire childhood.  

So Harry finds himself back at LA, soon enough when the tour has ended. To call it as his second home would maybe feel like an overstatement, but it is close enough. He’s bought a house there that he hadn’t had the time to decorate or furnish entirely, but even that doesn’t make him feel as lonely there as it did at times in his apartment back in London. Not that Harry even spends that much time in his own bed while he’s in LA, but it never failed to help him to free his mind.

So there were days of silence, a few of them. When Harry’s fingertips didn’t itch or get cold right before he falls asleep cramped into the pillowcase so it’s no free space around his skin. There were a few. But then it would come back like a swinging punch bag that’s filled with hidden longing and some memories that were cautiously put at the furthest corner of Harry’s mind, but it’s impossible to run away when seemingly every power of nature threw it back at him, including his own mind.

Harry knew it’s no way back then, that this has some sort of boomerang effect. A cruel little thing called yearn of touch. You can give them plenty of space; give them stadiums instead of arenas and months instead of weeks off and it would still cause more trouble than relief. Because that is how it works – the further you throw the boomerang the faster it flies back. The harder they would try to keep away from each other, the sooner they would end up side by side.

So, when Harry is standing there, the entire night sky of Los Angeles by his feet, his arms widened in flawless sense of freedom, it still isn’t enough. Still, he knows that he won’t reach the one thing he _really_ wants to. Not the pointed ending of that sky scraper’s rooftop or that star shining brighter than others right in front of him in the black sky, but a simple touch. To scrape Zayn’s pinky or nip the flesh on his hip. Or, luckily enough, to remind himself the taste of his mouth.

LA gave him temporary piece because it hold the magical power or ability to teach Harry how to escape his own thoughts. The kind of ones you usually get right before sleep, staring at the wallpaper you know every inch of, every ornament by your heart and still follow them with your eyes over and over again. But the price of the piece was as much as additional anxiety that overcome the calmness like a zebra skin. Black and white, black and white…

And of course the basis of the love for this city was its cosmic charm and the size of dreams that fitted Harry’s twenty year old heart. But above it all it was probably simply a place to hide. The streets of it able to keep Harry’s silent secrets that mostly consisted of maze and question marks, and a good amount of anguish. The City of Angels.

 

 

***

 

When Harry walks out of the bathroom he’s sure that he’s the last one left in the dressing room until he sees Zayn in the mirror, sitting right behind him and nibbling at the black napkin placed in the pocket of his suit. He doesn’t say a thing, just watches him, slicked hair and suited up; incredibly handsome. Unfairly, to be honest. The way his jaw clenches a little from the frustrating try outs to place the piece of fabric exactly the way he wanted to, making him look like a sharp piece of art. This could also be Harry’s favorite part about the award shows they go to. Zayn looking like a billion fucking dollars, a dark, shining diamond.

“Think Caroline could help you there,” Harry says at last, placing down the cologne after he’s sprayed two splashes on his collar bones and one on his wrist.

“She did,” Zayn says, not picking his eyes up at first, “then Louis threw the tennis ball over the room and – “, he looks at Harry and stops midway.

“What?” Harry raises a brow and turns around on his heels.

“Nothing,” Zayn stutters and swallows a jerky breath. “You’re stunning ‘s all.”

“Have you seen yourself in the mirror?”

Zayn smiles in response, but not in the little bit of devil, pretentious way he could sometimes when receiving a compliment about his angelic looks. He smiles, kind of helplessly, like a drowning person or something.

Harry walks up to him and places his feet on both sides of Zayn’s legs to frame him and gift a quick, desperate kiss.

“It’s kind of horrible,” Harry whispers right after, hypnotized by the shadows Zayn’s lashes leave on top of his cheekbones.

“Horrible?”

“Yeah. How much I want to hold your hand out there.”

“Ah,” Zayn nods, thoughtfully, hooking their indexes together, “but you know, you don’t have to do that to know I’m yours right?”

“You’re not mine out there.”

“Harry.”

“Actually, you’re not mine here either,” Harry laughs, a short cut sound.

“We’ve been through this before, how come I always have to prove myself to you?”

“How come indeed?”

A dark shadow runs over Zayn’s eyes as he holds on to Harry’s shoulder and stands up, his lips meeting Harry’s neck right away.

“I guess I’ll have to bite my name into your skin then? As a reminder.”

Their fingers dismiss and the shadow from his eyes reaches Zayn’s mouth just as he leaves a small, but sharp scratch behind the collar of Harry’s shirt.

“Later?”

\--

“Can I?” Harry has to bite on his tongue to loose his hands that are holding Zayn by his hair.

Zayn doesn’t answer – well not as he could talk anyway –, but it’s like he doesn’t even hear Harry up from above. Him fallen on his knees with lips wrapped around Harry’s cock and hands tucked behind his calf muscles, he’s somewhere else now, letting Harry to fuck his mouth senselessly.

“ _Zayn_ , can I?” Harry literally pushes the words as sounds, his voice shaking.

This time Zayn nods, or does that move with his head that Harry’s always considered as an approval and before he could doubt himself about it Zayn would look up at him and he’d be done anyway. Zayn’s eyes always mad when he finishes Harry, like actual fizzy sparks, he looks at him in such pulling way. Begging, but also devilishly satisfied that he’d get to do this again. Drive Harry to the edge and further, with the following moan that Zayn’s declared as his favorite trophy ever.

Zayn manages to imprint his nails into Harry’s skin right in time before Harry goes so hard on rocking his hips back and forward that he feels his neck banging the wall real hard. But they don’t lose their balance, amazingly, or not that really since they’ve practiced their rhythm quite on repeat now. But still, each time Harry thinks he’s gonna fall, knees weak and the last thrusts so out of control that for some short moment it seems that they’re on a jiggling ship. It doesn’t last too long though, just a couple more times Harry feels the head of his cock hitting the back of Zayn’s throat with that sharp hit. Feels Zayn completely letting go and just moving the way Harry makes him to and he can explode from it.

Harry comes with a moan that’s apparently too much of a noise this time since Zayn jumps on his feet to cover his mouth with his wrist right away.

“Easy there,” Zayn’s out of his breath as well, but Harry can still hear him grinning.

“God,” Harry groans behind Zayn’s pressed hand that he lets go once Harry’s opened his eyes again.

“That good, yeah?”

“I hate this,” Harry says immediately and Zayn laughs with raised brows.

“Really?” he squats down to pull up Harry’s boxers and lingers for a little when tries to get them over his dick that’s still throbbing massive and hard enough to twitch from a single fondle. “Your dick has different opinion, I think.”

“No, not that,” Harry rolls his eyes and zips up the pants. “You know how I feel about that,” he sweeps his thumb over Zayn’s jaw to clean it up a little.

Zayn licks his lips right away, brushing fingers through his hair that’s safe to say more than fallen out of their perfectionist placement. “What you hate then?”

“This,” Harry gestures around the two of them, a poky space with gray walls. A dark, small chamber that’s around the corner of their dressing room, apparently called as a shoe shelf or something since they’re both surrounded by over twenty pairs of new shoes.

“What, I think you were the one who didn’t want to wait until later?”

“Yeah, because I knew there won’t be no later,” Harry says, leaning at the wall again.

“You were fucking pinning for me the whole night! Besides, we do it always, on award shows? Don’t pretend this was unpredicted or something.”

“And why’s that? Why aren’t we using hotel rooms like we could? Bed and everything? Not squeezed in for walls where I can’t even finish myself with a sound,” Harry spurs and walks out of the chamber into their dressing room.

“Because _you_ wanted it now?” Zayn follows him from behind.

Harry falls backwards into the chair facing the make-up table and the wide mirror and watches Zayn walking behind him in it. “I wanted it now, because I knew the moment we’re out of the building you’ll be gone. Isn’t that right?”

Zayn stares at him in the reflection until his shoulders drop down a little low.

“You’re the one about after parties, Harry. You know that.”

“All I know is that this is all we get lately,” Harry nibbles around the powder brush that was the first thing he could find in his hands. “Rushed blow jobs,” he says it in a loath disgust.

“Well I’m sorry for giving you what you asked me,” Zayn snorts and comes closer, leaning on the back of the chair Harry’s sitting in. “We have what we _can_ have.”

“And is that enough for you?”

“Of course it’s not enough. It is never enough of us, I’ve said that before.”

“Really?” Harry hears his voice becoming all squishy. “So how come _I’m_ the one going off again? How come you can stand there in all peace while I feel like I’m losing my shit over a blank space?”

It’s almost visible how Zayn swallows the pain of Harry’s last words and transforms the dolor in an expression full of sympathy.

“You wanna blame me on staying sane, Harry? Or how about you thank me for one of us at least trying to do that from time to time.”

Harry looks at Zayn and what catches his eye – unfortunately – is the little bandana that Harry gave him earlier to tie around his neck which is in the same pattern as his shirt. “ _Wear this for me please? So we’d match somehow_ ,” he had asked and now for some reason it hurts real sharp.

“You know what I’ve learned?” Zayn continues and rolls Harry’s chair around so they’re face to face now. “I’ve learned that I have to do this fake, ridiculous composure or else – ”

“Oh, believe me, I know much about fake composures,” Harry echoes, bitterly.

“Or else,” Zayn takes a deep breath and repeats a little louder this time, “what if I forget how to do it? How to stay away?”

He squats down between Harry’s knees and puts both of his hands on Harry’s thighs – cautious and heavy.

“How to stop looking for excuses to touch you here,” he whispers and Harry can feel both of Zayn’s hands delicately brushing up from his elbows to his shoulders, “and here,” his fingers land on each side of Harry’s cheeks.

“Don’t,” Harry moans the request.

“You want me losing my shit?” Zayn asks, swooping his thumbs across Harry’s jaw line. “Then listen to me.”

Zayn pulls Harry’s entire face close enough so their foreheads are pressed together. “I think I’m addicted to you. Like a legit addict, Styles and it’s the hardest thing on earth to love you this much and stay sane.”

“ _Don’t_ , please,” Harry says, lowering his head in a hope that they would fall out of touch, but it only makes it worse.

“When we’re away, the space burns, doesn’t it?” Zayn iterates with his lips brushing against Harry’s while they move. “And I don’t know what is more fucked up, that none of us still have any idea of what is this or that we’ve just gone with it.”

Harry smiles, for an unknown reason. Pulls the corners of his lips upwards and feels Zayn doing the same so they’re kind of kissing the smile together.

“Ridiculous,” Harry admits.

“Right? I mean, we still haven’t learned how to say that goddamn goodbye, have we?” Zayn asks, keeping both hands on Harry’s cheeks.

“Yeah. One of us should really learn that goodbye thing.”

“I assume that would be me?”

“Probably,” Harry nods, dropping the smile then.

“Probably,” Zayn repeats and for a short, foolish second Harry honestly expected Zayn to leave it like this. To turn around, and at least pretend that it’s what he’s going to try and work for, to learn the distance. Learn how to heal the burns of the space between them.

But it really is only a foolish second before Zayn kisses him. Kisses him like in all the movies that Harry had seen about love they kiss. The ones that promised Harry that one day someone’s gonna teach him how that feels, it’s only that he never knew how much it’s going to hurt. And how often he wouldn’t care about the pain just because the real ache comes from the real love. Harry has had that idea in him for a while now that maybe we’re only meant to find out what love is when we go through heartache. The one that makes him feel alive and somewhat burnt because there’s this ridiculous principle of magnetization between the two of them that doesn’t leave much of a choice there.

Harry has learned that there are things and feelings you can’t resist even though they hurt you right about every day. Like every time he would have to see Zayn in the other’s arms or pretend how it’s so very alright with him that they _have_ fallen apart in some line yet the magnets between them keep getting stronger for some reason. As if they would feed from all the distance and pain and yearning.

There’s no logic, no explanation, it’s just the result. Because it’s one thing that something always brings two people back to each other, but it’s whole another that makes them stay. So there’s that, Harry thinks when they pull apart from the kiss and he sees a small, round tear floating at the corner of Zayn’s eye right before he pulls him in a full hug. A hug that doesn’t feel anywhere near like a goodbye.

\--

When Harry’s swam into the world of champagne and glamour, he adjusts his mind on the setting called ‘ _all the wrongs in your life doesn’t exist’_. All the sadness or stress, it vanishes the second he steps into a party with sounds of chatting and laughter, he just goes in there like it’s the brightest day of his life, full of good vibes to spread around. He goes there to meet new people and meet some long time no see friends that collides in a nice feeling of free falling. He gets to forget and it’s so relaxing.

So when it’s been some good two hours of it and in the middle of a conversation he looks up at his phone and sees that there’s a new text from Zayn, he manages to slip the phone back into his pocket and ignore it. For his own good, for his own piece.

He manages to do it successfully for about whole fifteen minutes. That’s a new record for himself.

When he cracks and does read it as soon as he’s all alone in the men’s room, it isn’t exactly what Harry expected to see: ‘ _I know ur busy, but I think I’m gonna give that hot bath a go. Want some company. U in maybe? x’._

Maybe it’s those couple of glasses of champagne or maybe it’s just Harry’s heart, but in a matter of minutes he’s saying goodbye to everyone in the party and is on his way to the hotel.

“I’m not drunk!” Zayn pouts when Harry’s entered the bathroom finding him in the fuming water.

“Really?”

“Yes!” Zayn exclaims and does this thing with his eyes that makes Harry want to kiss him all over, no questions asked.

“Well, you’re definitely not sober, honey,” Harry eyes his naked body that’s hidden under bubble bathed water and loads of other stuff that apparently Zayn just threw in there for fun.

“I said, I wanted some company.”

“You already got some,” Harry points at three yellow rubber ducks floating in the water.

Zayn pouts even harder, his cheeks blowing up with air, “wanted _you_ ,” he does a shameful mumble.

Harry walks closer to squat down at the edge of the bath and before he notices that there’s also a couple of grapes and rose petals between the bath foam, he picks Zayn up by his chin.

“You’re higher than a kite, aren’t you?”

Zayn’s eyes flicker in a medium panic as his thick lashes wave up and down fast enough to splash tiny piles of water in their way and that’s enough of an answer for Harry. Zayn’s an awful liar in general, but he’s kind of pathetic one when he’s drunk or high, really.

“And I thought you’d want me for good,” Harry says through a bittersweet smile and dips his finger into the foam to leave a small bit of it on the tip of Zayn’s nose.

“I do!”

Zayn’s voice cracks in between and _oh-no_ , is all Harry can think of before he’s already stripped down and trying to climb in to the water cautiously enough so some of it stays in the bath tub as well.

Among with all the weaknesses Harry has hidden under his sleeve for Zayn, this is one of the worst, if not the most of it. When he’s this high, completely lost the string of secrecy and any sort of composure, it’s just embarrassing how Harry would do anything for the foolish pout and complete nudity in his act. It’s like he turns into this grown up child that couldn’t hide an emotion even if his face would be covered up and everything he does, goes in a triple execution. Laughs louder than a Niall who’s down to his third beer and gets teary eyed more often than Harry’s granny during her fifty sixth time of watching  _The Notebook_. But most importantly, owns an awful lot of an influence on Harry because somehow, it also makes Zayn talk stuff that’s usually hidden behind his whiskey eyes. And it makes Zayn look unprotected, vulnerable. It’s like he would almost unconsciously ask for Harry to take that bit of care of him.

“What is it about you and weed, anyway?” Harry asks when he’s settled down between Zayn’s legs, his bare back leaned against his chest with bath foam and the most random things all around them.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, you know. Happens often with you.”

Harry doesn’t want to sound all mother-y or condemnatory about it, but there’s just things he doesn’t get a point of doing regularly like having a couple of puffs in exchange of some very few minutes of delusional euphoria or even worse, a line of illogical hallucinations. He always thought it makes you feel brave, which is how he explained Zayn’s acting until he once tried it himself, but it turns out it’s only a drunk kind of thing.

“Dunno. Escape, I guess,” Zayn says, skipping his wet fingers through Harry’s hair and trying to arrange them in some sort of a dripping bun thing.

“Escape from what? Reality?”

“Nah,” Zayn’s arms drop down on Harry thighs. “More like, my own thoughts?”

“Your own thoughts?”

“The unwelcome ones.”

“The dirty ones, you mean?”

“Those too,” Harry hears a smirk in Zayn’s voice.

“It doesn’t make any sense. Why would anyone want to escape their dirty thoughts?”

“Well, that’s a question Harry Styles would ask, yeah,” Zayn laughs and reaches for a rose petal to gently brush it over Harry’s collar bone down to his shoulder and the inked ship.

“It’s not about the dirty thoughts, really. More like the ones you feel bad about, you know? When you smoke, it stuns your brain and it can’t filter the stuff that’s running through it. So, you just…feel guiltless for that short moment.”

Harry puts his other hand over Zayn’s that’s now placed on his rose tattoo, trying to match the petal between his fingers to the inked one on Harry’s forearm.

“So that’s why you’re always so sure to message me when you’re like this? Because it doesn’t feel…bad?”

“It never feels  _bad_  with you, Harry,” Zayn squeezes Harry’s wet flash between his fingers to stress the meaning of his words and tries to square him from all sides, embracing his entire body. “Complicated, maybe. It often feels complicated.”

“Yeah, well we’ve been down that road, haven’t we? This thing,  _our_  thing is complicated as hell. A mystery. Little bit of tragedy as well, that’s no news.”

Zayn snorts from behind the way Harry can feel his lips vibrating against his own clavicle and then, when he bents his knees, Harry’s fully cornered in between him. Their bodies glued under the hot, fuming water.

“It never feels bad,” Zayn repeats, putting his chin down on Harry’s shoulder, “it’s just that I know it’s not fair for me to think some of the stuff when you’re around.”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re mine.”

Harry raises an eyebrow doing an obvious look at him - splashed down between Zayn's legs and it explains the question itself.

"No, like  _only_ mine. Luxury, mine," Zayn explains.

When Harry keeps silent Zayn continues, his voice painfully soft and a tiny bit soar.

„My mind does this thing where I wish you wouldn’t be that close to someone else. Or make someone else smile so much. Laugh so loud. Make someone that happy, you know? It’s awful, to think that.”

“It’s natural.”

“Yeah?”

“What, haven’t you heard of jealousy before?”

Zayn picks up his chin to put his lips against Harry’s ear and if not for the rubber duck slowly passing by his sight, he might as well come from this feeling, the way Zayn delicately bites down his earlobe at the same time he can feel his dick hardening right under Harry’s tail bone.

“I have,” Zayn brushes his nose against Harry’s jaw line, their wet skin gliding smoothly, “but I’ve also heard that it’s not fair to feel jealous of what doesn’t belong to you.”

Harry tilts his head so Zayn can continue leaving small bites down his neck vein until Harry’s entire body does this short shiver in reaction of the satisfaction that makes Zayn laugh in his full voice.

“So, it’s fair to think that when your high?” Harry purposively ignores Zayn’s laugh.

“No, but there’s no boundaries then. No rules, kind of? So I can fantasize all I want. Think of the two of us. Like this.”

“Like this?” Harry points at the two of them on top of each other, surrounded by rubber toys and little white piles of bath foam.

“Well, not like _this_ , always. Like, alone,” Zayn’s smile disappears from his voice with that last word as he wraps his arm around Harry’s shoulder and starts to draw round lines across Harry’s swallow tattoos with the bit of foam on the tip of his index.

“How’d you get all of this anyway?” Harry asks, wishing for the audible smile to come back.

Zayn fishes out one of the toy ducks to put it by his ear and pretend that he’s doing a phone call.

“Hello, this is Zayn Malik from One Direction – ,“ Zayn acts it out in some sort of posh accent.

Harry turns around waiting for a sequel when he doesn’t say anything else.

“That’s it. That’s how it usually works,” Zayn explains, “don’t tell me it doesn’t when being a Harry Styles?”

“It probably would if a Harry Styles had your kind of cheek bones,” Harry leans closer to swipe his nose against Zayn’s.

Zayn gifts him a leisure kiss as well as more of those silky touches where he would try to trace Harry’s skin crinkles with the foam on his fingertip tickling his moist flesh. They spend another good half an hour of that and massaging strokes until their fingers become so wrinkly from the moisture that Harry has to resist all of Zayn’s moans and arms thrown around his neck, pulling him gently back down because Harry also knows how this scenario always ends. It’s no surprise that Zayn becomes more and more tired with seconds as soon as he follows Harry climbing out of the bath with a loud slap on his wet bum. Then, lets himself being wrapped in the soft, puffy hotel towel by Harry’s strong hands brushing it against his skin to keep him warm.

It’s a routine, a sad one maybe. But it’s theirs.

Zayn smokes or Harry drinks a bit too much. They get the burning urge of being close to the other, an actual flame inside that grows into aching pain after the other’s touch, of their skin meeting and brushing together like it’s the only way they can apologize to their hearts that are yearning for this constantly. Harry understands the feeling of the mind freedom Zayn told him about earlier because it’s something invaluable. A treasure, to go inside of your head and feel free to think about it like it’s a real blessing not a sin they share. Not something you have to keep as a dead secret.

So they go there, they follow each other’s desires, then blow up like a firework that usually look like biting each other’s inks or rocking their hips uncontrollably or any other way that would give them the contentment that only exists between the two of them. Then, when it’s over, it soon grows into this huge bubble of silence that mirror’s the pain and reality checks at their faces, bringing back the pain. The bittersweet smiles that only mean one thing – it’s over. A short, blissful moment of let go. Like volatile fume – it disappears into their exhales once they fall asleep tangled into one another’s sides or more commonly – once one of them has to leave.

Tonight, no one has to go though. Harry swaddles Zayn inside of the white towel and brushes another one over his wet hair because he looks like he might fall asleep on his feet, his eyelids getting slow and heavy.

“There you go,” Harry throws the wet towel over his shoulder and takes Zayn’s cheeks between his hands to pull him in a serene kiss.

It looks like Zayn tries his hardest to keep awake just to stare down at Harry’s eyes and finally pull a tired smile, the one Harry recognizes as the after smoke effect. Right before Zayn falls asleep he always manages to fly through this sort of heavenly calm and peaceful place, one where it looks like he hasn’t shared a tear or felt anything but happiness through his entire time of being alive.

“There’s this weird feeling,” Zayn says, placing his hands on both sides of Harry’s neck.

“What’s that?”

“Like I will probably want this forever,” Zayn frowns a little and licks his lips meekly, “somewhere in my head, the two of us?”

There’s a long enough silence afterwards for Harry to count seconds until there’s gonna be a treacherous tear rolling down his cheek and for Zayn to make a lazy smile that somehow reflects more of a sad expression than a happy one.

“It’s just weird. To picture myself as a granddad and think you wouldn’t be around,” Zayn says, kissing the top of Harry’s nose.

Harry responds with a smirk that he picks out of nowhere because he feels like screaming. Zayn moves past him and collapses on top of the bed to keep mumbling things that Harry wishes he could shut down as soon as they are being said.

“You will make a great granddad,” Zayn rambles whilst trying to muffle himself under the fresh sheets, “all about gray curls and long stories. You’ll have like the longest stories, they will love those, the kids. They’ll love them. And you, they will love you madly.”

Harry turns around to approve the look he knew he heard in Zayn’s somnolent voice. He’s, cuddled up under the blanket with his chin barely out of it, doing a calm, deep breathing. And smiling drowsily through it.

“Gray curls,” he repeats with a following lethargic snort, “you’ll be great.”

He stays silent then, just continuing the long exhales so Harry walks closer to take a deeper look at him. He softly sweeps away a few wet strands of hair from Zayn’s eyes and as soon as Harry touches him he licks his lips, half asleep. Maybe already asleep completely, but he still manages to correct himself and mumble “we will be great”.

 _We_ will be great.

 

 

 

 

***

 

It’s an early noon, their only time for a short rest before another sound check. Before their eight show of the Where We Are tour, or maybe it’s the tenth already? Harry’s lost the count way too early and it only means one thing. He’s dead tired, exhausted from all of it. And feeling under the weather with painful tightness in his chest and soar throat is only an awful extra to this state.

Still, if Harry thinks about it, thinks about it with clear head and pure heart, it would seem illogical to grouse about touring. Harry can’t imagine a world where he doesn’t enjoy the thrill of being on stage in front of hundreds, thousands even people as much as he does. The joy and energy it gives can’t be earned in any other way so it is not fair to complain at all. It would never feel right to moan about any of it since it’s like the golden fruit of their so called job. It’s the greatest prize, really: people smiling in genuine happiness just because they get to see you, hear your songs. Get to earn that millisecond of your attention and sing along your songs. It honestly is the ultimate greatest feeling, Harry thinks, that exists. It’s all he imagined those years ago wondering alone in his bedroom and a million more.

But it has a double face this entire being on stage routine. As much as it builds so much adrenaline and electrified rush inside of your body, it also sucks a hell of a lot energy out of you. The minute you get to sit down after a show in silence, to hear how the ringing in your ears gradually quietens and your muscles lose the tense.

So yeah, maybe it’s a shameful thing to do. And Harry even might hate himself for being like this, but he hasn’t slept all night because he had to do some recordings for the new album. And then the previous night he got like two hours of sleep since his back was deadly killing him as they had to stay in the tour bus based on some security reasons and it was too late to arrange a hotel room. But it slips out anyway, the truth.

“Tired,” Harry admits blatantly when he’s on a phone call with his mom and she’s asking how is he feeling. “I’m tired.”

“Honey, you have to get as much sleep as you can and don’t forget to - … hey! Oh, sorry, Gemma must have just burnt half of the pasties.”

“Gemma’s over?”

“Yeah, she says hi!” Harry can hear distant sounds of plates crushing at some surface and Gemma’s high pitched apologies. “Pasty Sundays. Gotta keep the tradition, you know.”

Harry smiles, loosely playing with the corner of his pillow case. “Yeah, you better do. How’s Robin?”

“He’s fine, we’re planning that Maldives trip for anniversary, did I tell you?”

“Maldives trip?”

“Yes, we already…oh goodness, darling, please put a towel under the pan? No, not that one, oh – Harry, sweetheart, can I call you back? We have a bit of a kitchen catastrophe here.”

“Sure. Save the pasties.”

“Will try. Be safe, alright? And get some sleep, love you.”

“Love you too, mom.”

The second Harry hangs up he knows there’s something completely and utterly wrong. This sudden shock of loneliness, like some sort of a panic attack?

He feels his chest becoming heavy at first, heaving up and down like a rock hanged in a straw. Then, sweating palms and neck and pretty much every part of his body until he finally finds himself on the ground with an extinct need to scream. Flat on the carpet, his insides so empty and so nauseous at the same time that he automatically looks for something to puke on. He doesn’t get sick, but his head starts to spin in such mad circles that he barely gets to crawl out on the balcony before he’d pass out, probably.

 _The fuck?_ – is the top question. He tries to explain this himself, tries to find an answer of the feeling. Like he was the only person in the universe, like the entire human race had suddenly vanished and he was left here all alone, to survive. Harry knows it’s somehow connected to the phone call and his family, but it doesn’t quite click, until somewhere, at the back of his head, it does.

The fresh air helps a little, even though it seems that it’s swaying through him now. As if he was stabbed or something, a couple holes in his chest where the wind has its free way forth and back. Harry stays motionless as long as he’s sure that he can at least stand up and walk himself. As long as he’s sure that he can breathe again and perhaps, avoid vomiting or something.

His legs still feel like two chewed gums though, even when he leaves his room. Harry doesn’t think twice, maybe he doesn’t think at all when he goes straight to the elevator that brings him to Zayn’s floor, but it doesn’t matter. This is one of the scariest things he’s experienced, also one of the most embarrassing maybe? How could a person like Harry, someone with so much love and affection around him daily ever come down to this? To have a complete freak out about God knows what exactly, but it definitely has something to do with that terrifying thing called solitude.

Harry knocks about five or six times and at this point he’s sure that Zayn is most likely not in there or he’s asleep so he should walk away either way. But then, after the sixth time he hears some sort of a fuss inside and seconds later, Zayn opens the door.

It really does look like he was having a nap or something, his eyes all puff from the same exhausting state Harry is himself. He hasn’t bothered to change from earlier, probably just collapsed on top of the sheets and fallen asleep right away and Harry genuinely hates himself for bothering Zayn’s rest. But he also pleads his own guilt with an idea that this is an emergency. An irreparable condition that can only be healed in one way.

“Hey.”

“Hey. You okay?” Zayn asks, his voice rough and quiet.

Harry keeps silent, leaning at the wall. Zayn reads him from those couple of seconds that there’s something wrong so he doesn’t bother to say that he’s alright or anything.

Zayn arches an eyebrow at him and scratches the back of his neck, lazily. “Okay, well. Wanna talk then?”

Harry shakes his head, slowly. “I don’t need a talk. But you’ll have to listen.”

Zayn nods attentively and Harry could kiss him now just because Zayn would do this. Accept and do as Harry wishes and support even though this is their only time off and. All that horribly wonderful things Harry misses every god damn day they’ve been separated and he could turn to all fourth cardinals aimlessly, looking for someone who would understand, but still end up stuck at his own thoughts because Zayn wasn’t around.

“Take a seat,” Zayn jokes vaguely when they’ve entered the room, pointing at the green floral print sofa at the corner of his room, as if Harry was his patient.

Harry smiles weakly, almost invisibly. Actually, it’s not a smile but more like a painful smirk and Zayn must have caught that immediately.

“Or not,” he mumbles and pours a glass full with water to hand it out for Harry.

“Thanks,” Harry reaches for the glass, but as soon as they both notice how hard his hands are shaking, they freeze.

“I guess I better hold this for now,” Zayn keeps staring at Harry’s hands with big eyes until he hides them behind his back. “You really don’t wanna sit down?”

Harry shakes his head or at least he thinks that he’s doing that, still not feeling his bones quite right.

“Alright,” Zayn takes a slow sip from the glass himself and walks over to sit down at the end of his unmade bed.

He actually can’t move. Harry physically cannot move any muscle cell and the option of puking or passing out still hangs up in the air like a deadly waning. So it’s just the two of them and an ice cold silence.

“What’s wrong?” Zayn furrows his entire forehead so that the sleeping bags pop up under his eyes like bubbles in a soap water.

“I’m not sure,” Harry stumbles across the words. How could it be so hard, when it’s just Zayn here? It shouldn’t be this hard _or_ this cold.

“It’s just me, y’know,” Zayn replies on Harry’s thoughts.

Harry somehow breaks the stiffness in his chest and sits down, unwillingly. Sits down a good ten centimeters away from where Zayn’s thigh meets the mattress. They both eye the distance and Harry can hear Zayn grazing his jaw; the sound of his teeth brushing together cut through his brain like a drill in a stone.

“You said I’ll just have to listen so. I’m listening.”

“Okay,” Harry clears his throat before rolling his shoulders that founder down as soon as he opens his mouth. “Yeah, I just don’t know if I can - … I don’t know if you’ll understand.”

“Alright,” Zayn says, removing his sight from Harry and his face tightens to a very unfortunate white paper sheet level. “Share it anyway, _stranger_? And will see.”

Zayn stresses that one word particularly and Harry feels his spine cracking a bone by bone so quick that he feels like he might collapse in a pile of miserable inked pieces of skin any moment now. He doesn’t have the slightest will to worry about Zayn feeling small because of him now.

“I’ve just never felt this way before. I mean, we all get homesick and all, but I was just on phone with my mom and Gemma and it – ,” Harry hides his face in his hands. “This is so stupid.”

Zayn looks back at him, “Harry, it’s not stupid if it makes you this upset.”

“Yeah, I know, I just…Okay, well. Have you ever felt like you’re not quite sure of where your home is anymore? As if even your family has accepted that you’re always away, never there. Maybe forgot how it was when you were around. Like you’re maybe not fully a part of it anymore?”

Zayn stays silent, but makes sure that his face is as soft as it can be.

“I know I could always go back there and my mom would be the happiest person on earth if I’d stay for more than a couple of days. But while we’re out here, different city every day?” Harry knows his hands are still trembling so he hides them under his thighs, away from Zayn’s eyes. “I just had this panic attack out of nowhere. I got so terrified that I’m out here with all of you guys and all the crew and everything, but I’m still so lonely for some reason?”

Harry can literally hear the silence beating his already running heart and it becomes a challenge to sit in piece, no quaking limbs.

“I feel homeless, Zayn,” Harry laughs, nervously with a short and high sound, hearing how weird that word sounds from his mouth. “Is this like a normal thing to feel?”

They hang in a silence until Zayn rises both of his eyebrows and leans his head forward. “Is that it?”

Harry nods, focusing his eyes on ornaments of Zayn’s wrist tattoo.

“Okay, first of all, Harry. Homesickness, really? That’s my specialty, how could you think I wouldn’t understand?”

“Don’t know. Maybe because you’ve always been like that? And you’re such a home person, that’s where you feel the best.”

“So that’s why I couldn’t get it? Because I’ve missed home since day one?”

“No, it’s just that I’ve never needed it in that way? I don’t even crave for London anymore, I’m-“

“You’re LA now, yeah. I know.”

Harry bites on his lip because of the way how Zayn says it, a small string of resentment in his tone.

“The thing is,” he clears his voice and turns at Harry thoroughly, one knee bent and a hand osculating to where he’s sitting, “we’re both loners, Harry.”

Honestly, Harry’s been thinking about what unites them both a bunch of times, too many probably, but _this_ had never occurred his mind, ever.

“In different ways of course,” Zayn continues. “But we both need an occasional escape, right? It’s just for me it’s enough to hide in my room for half an hour, but for you…think you just need way more space.”

“Both loners, huh?” Harry repeats it because that is what his mind gets stuck on.

Zayn smirks at him, kindly. “Not that different, are we after all?”

“Yeah, we are.”

“Really, you still think like that?”

“I do. I mean, you drink your tea while it’s still fuming? I drink my tea lukewarm. Sugarless. You put in like what, four spoons in it?”

“Two.”

“I knew that.”

“I know you did,” Zayn smiles properly now with the resident crinkly nose thing. “So, tea drinking habits? Is that our biggest difference these days?”

“Seems like,” Harry gives in and smiles as well, pulling out his hands from under his thighs and feels how his full body kind of sews up.

“Hey, but about that loner thing. It’s okay that it kind of back fires, you know?” Zayn says and shifts closer to destroy the absurd space between them. “It has happened to me before. I’d miss my privacy so much that when I’m finally back at home and I can hide in my room and everything, it starts to kill me then. Like I couldn’t survive without anyone around.”

“Reverse psychology?”

“Something like that. But you can’t run away from those weird feelings, I’ve learned that good enough now. Not with our lifestyle.”

“I guess,” Harry tells with a bitter smile and reaches for his chest where it had just seemed to be stabbed a couple of times only minutes ago. “It’s just that sick feeling of homelessness. So wrong.”

Zayn’s eyes wonder away, swim a little blurry with some thought in it and then when he wakes up, he leans over to take Harry’s hand in his.

“How about that entire _‘your home is where your heart’s at’_ thing? That’s what you always say yourself.”

“That’s so confusing, actually. Like I’d know where my heart’s at?”

“Okay, but it’s still a feeling, right? Home. Home is a feeling.”

Harry rises an eyebrow at him, “Zayn Malik’s life lesson time?”

Zayn goggles, but laughs right after. “These aren’t mine. I steal them.”

“I knew it.”

“No, but just imagine. What if this, right now – “ Harry feels his palm being squeezed and rubbed all warm “ – is your home?”

Harry can’t respond on it, that’s how pleasant it feels. A nice, unexpected silence and Zayn holding his hand like they’re having a movie moment or something. And all Harry can think of is how if later in his life he had to associate anything with the word love, this could be the perfect memory.

“You’re so good with this,” Harry smiles and feels his entire insides heating up.

“With what?”

“With making me feel better.”

“Glad to help, rock star.”

Harry rolls his eyes, because Zayn hasn’t called him that in ages, but then also leans in to kiss him. Kiss him in a way that makes them hum in unison into each other’s mouths, slow tongue twirls and rolling bottom lips. And just when Zayn’s hand reaches over to cup the nape of Harry’s neck and swipe a firm thumb across his skin there? That touch really does feel like home.

“God, I’ve missed this,” Harry says when Zayn has laid him down, each hand on both sides of his face. “I’ve missed us.”

“I know,” Zayn smiles and slowly catches the edge of Harry’s shirt to pull it upwards.

Harry doesn’t hesitate, he could never. Just lifts up his arms and lets him to, slow and cautious. It’s so pleasant, so incredibly delicate when they can go this leisurely. When they can afford it, when Zayn is up for it, when he’s urging it, even. So Harry just enjoys every bit of this, closes his eyes and lets Zayn to explore his skin up and down, even though he probably knows every bit by his heart now. Lets him to leave a line of kisses from his ribcage up to his chest and neck, to bite lightly on the ends of his collar bones. To use himself entirely, his hands on Harry’s shoulders to hold on to them while he’d circle his tongue around his nipples and then glide soft fingertips all over Harry’s forearms.

Harry can’t even recall when Zayn’s ever been this touchy and sensual, and soft. Every touch feels like he thinks Harry’s made of glass, but at the same time they’re deep. Scraping heavy fingers over Harry’s tattoos like he’s discovering them for the first time and leaning in to play his tongue over outlines of his sleeve. The anchor on his wrist and the following rose on his forearm, then leaving a kiss on the little “A” he had drew himself there a long time ago.

“Think we'll ever get enough of us?” he wonders, pulling on Harry’s hair softly, to imprint another row of sloppy kisses – behind his ear this time.

“Great question,” Harry grins and tucks at Zayn’s T-shirt to remove it as well. "Tell me if you ever find out."

It’s been years now, them knowing each other in this kind of way, but it still catches Harry’s breath a little, the look of Zayn’s naked torso on top of him. All the contrast between golden skin and black inks, those wide shoulders and defined flesh. The warm jelly in his belly never disappears, when the realization of having the chance to own Zayn like this, exists.

Zayn has his knees on both sides of Harry’s thighs and when he leans in to kiss him again, much deeper, he also thrusts his hips down. But staying still, very slow and making sure Harry knows he won’t rush this for any chance. But yeah, Harry’s never been good at slow in bed, neither giving or receiving it.

“I’m thinking,” Harry pants, trying to swallow once Zayn’s mouth has lowered to Harry’s chest. “You should probably fuck me.”

Zayn’s tongue freezes right above Harry’s hardened nipple before he tilts his head a little. “You never stop surprising me, Styles.”

“One of my many talents.”

“Indeed,” Zayn rubs his bottom lip over the nipple, then straightens a little. “But slow. I want you slow.”

Harry shortly stays silent only to pretend that he’s pondering it. “Alright. But we have a show in four hours.”

Zayn snorts, but he doesn’t give in and it doesn’t go any faster from that point really. Harry can’t complain though, in fact, he begins to think that this might be the best thing they’ve ever done. Better than all the insane anxiety and unrestrained lust even if it’s still in there. Just reassuring how much missing there’s been, all the profound touches and the build up to what they know they’re going for.

But Zayn’s undeniably better in this patience thing, making sure he glides his lips over the butterfly and licks his way all the way down to the leaves on his lower stomach. It’s well deserved, Harry admits, to receive some serious bites down on the left side where he used to have _Might as well…_ But Zayn doesn’t hang on it, not this time.

It becomes a bit of a mission impossible for Harry just to lay down stationary and enjoy within seconds of more touches. His throat completely dried out from the way he can’t close his mouth anymore and fingers swooped into Zayn’s hair, just something to hold onto. Then, just as Zayn has dragged Harry’s jeans down, he spreads his legs a bit wider to do small kisses on his inner thighs. It tickles right enough for Harry to pull Zayn by his hair real hard, him leashing a moan.

“Shit, sorry,” he spits out and it’s the first proper word he’s said in minutes that Zayn’s spent in this skin to skin teasing. “I won’t last.”

“I can see,” Zayn stares down at Harry’s cock that’s straight up in the air, begging to be set free from the tight fabric of boxers.

Zayn doesn’t hesitate, thank God, and pulls them down to Harry’s ankles and then, just from the feeling of his hand around it, Harry’s back arches so high that Zayn has to lightly push him back down in the mattress. It doesn’t last though, him flat and motionless since Zayn puts the dick in his mouth, doing about four slow up and down’s. Harry’s eyes do some kind of a one hundred and eighty degree spin and lock on Zayn’s face right after. Finds him settled down on his knees between Harry’s legs with cheeks hollowed so deep that Harry could also just come from that particular look he gives him. He never uses his tongue though and Harry guesses it’s to avoid him finishing off before they’ve even started.

“Ready, are we?” Zayn grins and his voice finally reflects the familiar dark edge.

Harry groans for an answer and he only gets to feel Zayn’s fingers going deep into the soft skin of his hips for a short second before he’s been flipped around. Flat on the stomach, his cheek against the sheets, he knows that from here the anticipation will grow like insane.

Zayn is so fucking better at this, still managing to go so cautious. Climbing up on Harry with a row of kisses left on his spine and spatulas, just a tad more chaotic and keen than the previous ones.

“You sure, yeah?” he whispers once he’s reached Harry’s neck.

“Oh God, yes.”

He can feel Zayn smiling upon his skin and then going back down on him. He leaves the last two kisses each on one of Harry’s ass cheeks before circling the tip of his tongue around the hole twice.

“No teasing,” Harry begs when the tip of it touches his entrance, “please, no teasing.”

“Alright,” Zayn agrees, pulling Harry up by holding onto his hipbones so he’s on his fours now. “Your wish.”

He can feel a couple of light slaps on his ass before Zayn spreads his cheeks just enough to enter the first finger in him up to his knuckle. But Harry doesn’t manage to arch his neck and spine enough or even get used to that feeling when there’s already two fingers in. The only pause he remarks is when Zayn disappears to get the lube and condom from bathroom, but soon enough, he’s feeling filled again. Three slicked fingers being pushed into him with no warning and Harry has to crash his teeth into the fabric of the sheet.

“No teasing, right?” Zayn reassures and scissors two fingers more than once. Slow again, making sure he goes deeper each time.

“No, don’t stop, no – “

“I won’t,” Zayn whispers into his neck, more like groans, overly leaned by Harry’s back, three fingers still inside of him. “I won’t stop.”

“Yes,” Harry feels high when hearing his voice now, “fuck yes.”

Zayn goes a little faster with one hand gripped into his hip and the other moving in and out of him, but still way too slow. Harry reaches for his own dick because the tempo is starting to kill him, the entire approach of Zayn pushing his fingers in with such anxiety, a strong move and then pulling out for what feels like two days.

“No, babe, not like that,” Zayn’s fully on top of him again, lips pressed to the edge of his jaw. “You know the rules, yeah?”

The hand Zayn was fucking him with is now on top of Harry’s that he got to wrap around himself for nearly five seconds. Five seconds of relief until Zayn reminds him what’s the deal. The one they have a silent vow about.

“Not touching myself,” Harry pants it out like a common sex lesson or something.

“Good boy,” Zayn lets go of Harry’s hand and finally lines himself up, knowing that Harry won’t survive longer with or without touching.

He shuffles over the sheet and sets the way Harry feels the weight of him, his knees bordering his thighs with wet skin meeting right between. He then rolls a condom with a familiar sound and finally presses the head of his cock against Harry’s hole.

“Go,” Harry hears himself muffling against the pillow he’s holding against his face now. “Please, just go.”

And for the first time since Zayn laid him down, it really does feel like he’s going fast. Maybe it’s his own anxiety or maybe it’s Harry’s reward, but he doesn’t even warm up for it. He may go a tad cautious for the first few times just to line himself up, to make sure it doesn’t hurt for Harry, but once he’s been fully inside of him, he doesn’t even properly pull out. Harry can feel their hips hitting together and Zayn’s unfortunately sharp hip bones hitting his skin and then him going harder and deeper with each time.

“Shit, Zayn – “

Harry lets go of the pillow he was biting marks into and just lets his head to lifelessly hang down like there’s no muscles in his neck, bouncing up and down in the rhythm of Zayn’s thrusts.

“You like fast, yeah?” Zayn asks and he’s there again, a cheek pressed on Harry’s clavicle.

“ _Zayn_ ,” Harry begs when he notices that he has stopped moving, but hasn’t pulled out. Him fully inside of Harry and both hands gripped into his shoulders now. “Fuck, you have to finish.”

“I know,” he can hear Zayn flinching a smile when he removes the wet strains of curls that are covering half of Harry’s face to kiss his dimple. ”Nice and slow.”

And just as Harry thinks that it’s the white flag, just as he thinks Zayn’s ready to rock the fuck out of him, he swears real loud, his face back into the pillow.

It’s unbelievable actually that Zayn can hold his role to the very end. And Harry, somewhere in the leftovers of his consciousness, understands why he was starting the thrusts with a rush. To prove his point, just as a Zayn fucking Malik would do.

_Slow. I want you slow._

But it doesn’t destroy Harry’s need, it just makes him explode in another fifty colors. Zayn changes his angle just a little and pulls out to thrust back in slow – so fucking slow – but real deep. With both hands on his ass he manages to control Harry’s entire body, make him shake up and down. And Harry knows that Zayn has never fucked him this deep like he legit wants to drive him to the edge each time and when he does – Harry comes with a yell.

He collapses flat on the mattress right ahead in a complete booze. He doesn’t hear anything, see anything, just feels.

Harry feels the _falling over the edge_ state in a way he has never before, like he’s maybe having his first orgasm ever or something. As if this is an undiscovered thing – dizzy head and limbs that tremble uncontrollably until they kind of die entirely for a couple of seconds. The nice, indescribable explosion.

The first thing he hears is Zayn’s loud groan when he comes and the following hot stream spilt all over his lower back.

He lands down half on Harry, half on the bed and Harry thinks it’s beautiful, in a very extraordinary way beautiful. The sound of Zayn’s heavy breathing right against his ear and his face kind of wrecked a little. Mouth parted and hair line shining wet, it’s like a silent aftermath.

“Nice and slow,” Harry repeats and Zayn flops on his back to eye him. “You’re so bad at it.”

Harry pouts, long enough to extract a kiss. “I think I did better than you would.”

“Wanna bet?”

“Sure. I’d love to watch you suffer.”

“I bet you would,” Zayn laughs, hiding his face into Harry’s hair that’s splashed all over the sheets.

Harry closes his eyes for a second and it almost knocks him over, the simple fulfilment. The sound of silence and the smell of their mist flesh, so familiar. It’s one of those very brief moments when you kind of forget about the rest of the world, like there’s no one else out there just the two of you. And the feeling of being all alone reminds Harry why he came to Zayn after all.

“Thanks,” he says, quiet and Zayn looks up at him.

“For what?”

“You know,” Harry smiles a small one, turning on his side and wrapping a plodding arm around Zayn’s waist. “Everything.”

Zayn blinks a smile for an answer and closes his eyes that give in the weight of his lids and exhaust they hold. It’s also only then when Harry recalls that Zayn was sleeping when he knocked on his door, all panicked, having the only rest he’s gonna get for a relatively long time since it’s his turn to do some recording tonight. A heavy punch of guilt crashes Harry, the one where he wants to just vanish together with him, to wake up and be far, far away. On a lonely island or something, yellow sand and orange sky.

But the guilt gradually lowers within each soft snore he can hear from Zayn. They don’t have much time, maybe a half an hour left to lay down like this. But it’s their time and Harry doesn’t take his sight off from Zayn more than twice just watching him in his sleep. Observing those bushy lushes and excellent liniment and the soft skin on his neck nape. The inks, old ones and latest ones, trying to study them all over and over again. Every bit of Zayn’s skin, all of it so familiar after all. Familiar enough, that Harry is sure that this is the closest to home he’s felt in a long time.

\--

“Hey,” Harry wraps his arms around Zayn from behind where his naked waist meats the rubber of the loose gray sweats he’s thrown on him.

“Sorry,” Zayn apologizes for the cigarette, reflectively, as soon as he blows out the smoke turning away from Harry.

“You look upset,” Harry rests his chin on Zayn’s shoulder. “Are you?”

“Oh, no. Miss home a little ’is all.”

Harry nods and slightly tightens the hold, making sure, Zayn feels Harry’s fingers nipping the flesh of his hip bone.

It’s an outrageously beautiful sight in front of them. One of those windows that seem wider than the entire wall unfolding the view of LA streets completely lightened up. All of it – shining lights and seas of yellow cabs looking like ants from this far – all of the polished noisiness and imposing sense of the metropolitan down under their feet.

“I get it why you love it so much here,” Zayn tells, his voice still rough from the smoke, “this city defines you.”

“You make me sound really impressive, you know.”

“It’s true, though. All the ambition and gratitude at the same time. The rock star vibe and shining lights? It’s you.”

Harry smiles, thinking about it and how big those words sound coming from Zayn’s mouth.

“Maybe. But I never thought I’d feel it like this here when we first came. Not even close.”

“But it charmed you, didn’t it? The city. You share the same talent,” Zayn smiles, pressing his cheek against Harry’s face and lazily blows out the last puff.

“You don’t like it much here though, do you?” Harry asks.

Zayn shakes his head, wiping off the smoke.

“Not that I don’t like it,” he hesitates, “it’s just that the wider the views are, the more I miss home.”

“Mm,” Harry nods upon Zayn’s cheek.

“I actually love the states. How big things are and the freedom, it feels differently here. Like you can disappear? Hide without hiding.”

“Exactly.”

“Yeah, I love that. But the rest, the buzz and haste, it’s just. Tiring for me?”

Harry keeps silent and simply observes how calm and in control Zayn’s voice sounds. How he might crave for home internally, but then be this soft outside. Not hiding anything, just laying it out there in front of Harry, in full honesty. How it seems a bit nostalgic, the way Zayn has relented towards him and on his own. How silent it seemed now, no rush, no hiding. No fear.

“Don’t take me wrong, but I think it’s changed you as well. The city,” Zayn contemplates.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re much wiser these days,” Zayn smiles and ducks his head a little. “More silent as well. Maybe you’ve find the ‘real-you’ here or something.”

Harry thinks about it, how he comes back here and feels more self-contained with each time and Zayn might be right. The hell, Zayn’s _always_ right about these things, about Harry and what he hadn’t discovered about himself yet. Maybe there are things that Zayn already knows about Harry that he’ll discover years from now in a self educating trip around India? Fairly possible.

“Hey, isn’t that full moon?” Harry notices and points at the bright yellow light shining behind the skyscrapers.

“Looks like that.”

“Should we dance?”

Zayn turns around immediately, laughing, but not taking his arms away from Harry’s.

“What?”

“Well, if I remember right, few years ago you hadn’t danced with anyone in the moonlight. Has anything changed ever since?”

Zayn shakes his head and laughs sincerely. “No, haven’t had the chance yet, Romeo.”

“Excellent.”

Harry slips out of Zayn’s touch to lean over the bed where his laptop was left opened and presses play to the first song that appears on his iTunes.

“You know, I’m not much of a good dancer,” Zayn says when Harry’s back next to him, eyes flittering in a forgotten childish excitement.

“So I’ve heard.”

“Any advices, Mr. Styles?”

Harry smirks when puts one arm at the back of Zayn’s waste, and with the other links their fingers together.

“There’s this simple technique,” he says, pulling them both together the way their knees are sequentially pressed at each other.

“What’s that?” Zayn asks and lets his head go as it rests partly on Harry’s bare shoulder, partly on his neck.

“When I push,” Harry makes a tiny step forward, “you pull.”

Harry hears Zayn smiling beneath his breath and it’s enough of a proof that he’s also still holding the quote in his memory. Moonlight, Zayn’s glowing skin in his arms and Los Angeles beneath their feet. Might as well be one of Harry’s most colorful day dreams.

They move around like that, silently swaying from side to side through the sounds of acoustic guitar. Their shirtless bodies glued and keeping warm from the heat they give to each other and Harry feels his heart so full. Not sure of what, but there isn’t a single hole inside of him.

“Has it always been this simple?” Zayn asks and Harry can feel him tilting his head so he can eye the enlightened rooftops outside the window as well.

“What exactly?”

“Dancing.”

Harry smiles at it then, as the two of them really do unnaturally smooth steps, slow and beautifully coordinated.

“I think it is, yeah. Always been this simple.”

 

 

***

 

 

“You too?” Preston’s voice appears from the back once Harry’s hit the private zone for the flight anteroom.

“Oh, hi. Who else?” Harry stutters as he has his mouthful of his passport, boarding ticket and wallet all at the same time.

“Guess the biggest sleep starver,” Preston snorts and pats Harry’s shoulder, leading him further into the room.

Harry turns around to pass by the corner and find Zayn settled down in the bright, glazed room over three lounge chairs all at once, napping. He has his hair all over the place and the usual nice knees crawled up to his noise pose is now replaced with a splashed out position with arms and legs everywhere.

“What was he doing last night?” Harry asks to Preston who’s on his way to the coffee machine.

“Not much. Stayed in, I think?”

“Right,” Harry snorts and shakes his head. There is really no one in this world that he knows who’d enjoy their sleep as much as Zayn does.

Harry walks closer to take a deeper look at his face that’s pressed against the arm of the puff chair. His breathing tranquil yet eyelashes tremble a little each time he exhales and Harry’s guessing that he’s either having an intense dream or he’s not asleep at all. He pulls out one of his headphones, cautiously, to check himself and Zayn immediately squeezes one eye open.

“Oh,” he groans a low sound, trying to get used to the light. “Hey.”

“Hey yourself,” Harry whispers and softly cards his fingers through Zayn’s front hair. “Catching beauty sleep?”

“Always,” Zayn mumbles a bit dopey, whipping off the little slobber at the corner of his mouth. “Are we boarding?”

“Not yet,” Harry says and once Zayn’s shifted his half asleep limbs on one side of all three chairs, he sits down on the edge of the last one where his shoes are placed at.

“Thought it’s only me on this flight?” Zayn says with a yawn whilst trying to somehow arrange his hair under the black beanie.

“Yeah, me too,” Harry smiles and looks around to check if anyone’s near them, but the closest person is still Preston, fighting with the coffee machine a couple of feet away. “Are you surprised though?”

“About what?”

“Ending up on the same flight. With me.”

“No,” Zayn smiles back at him – knowingly – and puts his legs over Harry’s lap. “Not surprised about anything anymore, really.”

Harry nods and he can’t stop smiling a little foolish even when they fall into the most comforting silence ever. Zayn back to sweet napping and Harry scrambling into his diary since he had discovered that airports are one of the most inspiring places to do writing.

There is just something exceptionally calming about those wide waiting rooms, especially the ones with the full wall windows where you can watch the planes taking off and landing down right in front of your eyes. You would think they’d induce some extra anxiety since it’s always about going away or coming back, but it’s the total opposite for Harry. The sound of plane’s wheels crashing asphalt all muffed behind the glass and sky within a touch of a hand away, suddenly so reachable. It’s nostalgic as well, a little sad probably. Because these days, Harry’s heart usually protests and fights against any more travelling. Demands its will for the warmth of home. So he’s more than thankful to have Zayn’s eyes and touch to make him feel homelike this time.

And later, when they’re both in the plane, quiet and full of reflection as it is every time the plane rises up in the sky, they can’t write it down on anything. Not on the mad aftermath they feel after their shows that drags them both together or on the pressed loneliness they both struggled with and could only cure with each other’s presence. Not even the gravity since there’s none of it up in the air. Yet, Harry’s head ends up on Zayn’s shoulder within less than half a minute, their fingers linking in their sleep even upon the white, curled cirrus.

And doesn’t it constantly feel like the closeness will probably tear them apart completely one day? It most certainly does. But does Harry still risk his entire heart on this chance to play along with gravity rules and God’s of destinies and what else not to keep their _thing_ as the dearest secret he can hold onto? He does.

They both do.

 

~~~

**Author's Note:**

> A huge thank you to both Yonit and Lola whom I'd keep sending small bits of this just to get some of it off my chest. You were both wonderful and your continuous excitement as well as the rousing comments always kept me going. And thank you to anyone who even cared to open it nevertheless to get through it all. Lots of love.


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